All right. Thank you, Chair.
I appreciate that, but I do want to say again that my preference would be that we would be doing some work. My preference would be that we be engaged in doing the work we've been asked to do.
Picking up where I think I left off—I stand to be corrected by you, Mr. Chair—I do believe I had mentioned the point in the 2001 motion that the Chrétien government brought in to deal with a very similar situation, which was done in a far more co-operative way, even though Mr. Chrétien was known from time to time to be a little autocratic himself, as we all know. On this issue, Mr. Chrétien felt it was important that any changes to the Standing Orders have the agreement and buy-in of everyone. That's why he presented this.
I was in the process of reading into the record the mandate that was given to that committee at that time, given the fact that it is that model that my House Leader, Mr. Rankin, and the Conservative official opposition House leader, Madam Bergen, have both recommended as a way to get us off the....
Do you know what's interesting, Mr. Chair? So far, the only people who have brought new ideas to get us out of this mess is the opposition. The government seems to be quite content to have us in the ditch and stay in the ditch. It's their way or the highway. It's us, interestingly enough, who have consistently, since this began, been putting formal ideas on the table. I can't tell you how many side meetings we've had with Mr. Simms, Mr. Richards, and myself to try to put forward ideas. All those ideas, I want you to know, except for the one.... The government has come up with this one thing. I'm assuming they've made it public—if not, so what—that, oh, they're willing to move off the June 2 dime and make it the fall.
Really, what does that change? Whether you get your political head chopped off on a Tuesday or on the following Thursday doesn't change things too much: your head is coming off. Whether the government held off using their majority until the fall deadline as opposed to the June 2 deadline really doesn't make much difference to us except as days on the calendar.
Again, why the government thought that was going to do anything is beyond me. It's not a question of time, per se, although, Mr. Chair, they do have a bit of a time problem. If I might just say parenthetically, one of the problems they have is that once we get past this we still have a myriad of problems to deal with, not the least of which is that it was the new Minister of Democratic....
I don't think they're called “democratic reform” anymore, we kind of threw that....
Is it still democratic reform?