I thank you for that. That was a tour de force. That is how you do this sort of thing, and I admire that. I'm glad I got a chance to get to know you a little better.
I would just say in seriousness that I thought your last comment was heartfelt and not in any way tongue-in-cheek, when you said, “This was a good discussion. Why can't we keep doing that?” I would like to say to you, through the Chair, that that's the kind of work we've been doing. When I pointed to that report, the one I've been waving around all night, that's how we got there. When I said we did good work, I didn't just mean we pulled together a report. It's like public accounts. We have a great dynamic at public accounts. I'm so blessed. Those are the two committees I sit on, and that is the way we work.
But Mr. Doherty is correct. The only thing stopping us, Mr. Badawey, from getting to that point is asking the government to withdraw its residual desire to make a decision alone. If that nice discussion, and enjoyable discussion, and positive discussion that you were part of fails, then under the rules we've been following regarding consensus, there would be a report that says something like this.
Given the lack of consensus the committee has heard regarding whether potential benefits of eliminating Friday sittings outweigh the potential drawbacks, the committee does not intend to propose a recommendation regarding this matter. In other words, we couldn't come to agreement.
Some will say, well, therefore, that makes this inefficient and ineffective, and yet I've pointed to other reports in the past, particularly the one from the 37th Parliament in 2003, that went out of their way to say to us that in their opinion—my words—Parliament is better served by not having rules that not everyone agrees to, than by resolving a problem.
Put another way, we all agree that there's a problem. We can all agree that Fridays could be used better. The question is, what is that “better”? We may or may not be able to come up with a consensus. If we do, it's in the report. If we don't, then it goes in the way this does, which shows that we took a shot at it. We tried.
I'm going to be making references to other decisions like this, where we actually say that this is important and we want to come back to it. We don't have a consensus yet, but we are putting ourselves on notice that we want to come back and work at this, because it's important for us to try to find agreement in some of these areas where we believe change should happen but we just can't agree on the details of that change.
That, Mr. Badawey, is respect. Then, when I'm listening to your opinion—I'm listening to Vance Badawey give me his opinion as a member of Parliament on behalf of his constituents—and your own life experience, and what you believe is in the best interest of this committee, I will listen to you, and I'll do my best to try to understand your perspective, especially if it's different from mine. But it is very difficult for me to do that if you reserve the right to use the power of all your buddies to overwhelm all of us, so that whether you win the argument by debate or not, you win because might makes right.
That's the problem. We have not had that.
I'm about to make reference to another report we did, which was on the Chief Electoral Officer's report. We, this committee, in this Parliament, since you've been here, did this for the second time.
This committee brags about the fact that everything in here is by consensus. That's the difference, sir. If you remove the threat that your government wants the right to use your majority to carry the day, when your arguments to me don't convince me, we can't have the same kind of discussion. We can't have the kind of discussion that got us these two reports.
That's what my friend Mr. Doherty was referring to when he talked about a lack of trust. It's hard to have a debate with someone when they say that no matter how this goes, my way will prevail; if I have to, I will use political force to make it happen; and now, as long as you clearly understand that, let's have a nice, free, fair give-and-take discussion about how this should be resolved.
That becomes impossible. That is our whole point. It's on that one issue. It's not whether we agree on Fridays, or Wednesdays, or all the other issues. At this point, it is a political fight. It is a war. Your government made a war by pushing it into 24-7. We are 100% prepared to stand down from it the second the government indicates that it's no longer trying to get the upper hand that it hasn't had even in this Parliament, let alone in previous Parliaments. The second that happens, we're into that discussion. You would be, any time you're here, a positive contribution to that, because the kind of discussion you saw happen here....
These mostly aren't even the full-time members of the committee. This is the kind of culture we've created. This is the kind of environment our chair creates. He provides a lot of latitude. He does have his limits. That's why I always keep an eye on him, out of the corner of my eye. At some point he decides his limit has been reached.
But that's the kind of culture we have. We do work together. I think you'd find it very stimulating. You obviously have a lot of experience in “hand on the ground” local politics, where it's real. We're not that far apart in our desires. You're probably getting to be a bit like me in that you've been around long enough in politics that the adversarial stuff really starts to get stale. What really can excite you is trying to bridge the difference when we have a common cause. We just have to figure out the details of how to get there, and then we all work together as a team.
That's stimulating. It's enjoyable. It's good work. It leads to reports that are accepted by the House, with recommendations that all members feel have been fairly considered. While it may not be everything they want, they can live with that rule, because it's fair-minded and it came from a place where fair-mindedness was the order of the day.
Right now you have managed to focus, with pinpoint accuracy, on what the problem is. It's not our lack of ability to talk. It's not our lack of ability to be respectful. It's not our lack of ability to work together. It's a lack of rules that allow us to do that where we're treated equally to you. I'd love to be having a debate with you, knowing in the back of my mind that if your argument doesn't convince me, I can force you to accept my way. That's a very different debate to have that tucked away in the back of my mind rather than the only way we'll get any change is that Mr. Badawey and I have to find some common cause here. We have to find that language.
That's where we start getting help. Our staff start helping. Our analysts help. Our chair helps. Then we get to two good reports: the 23rd report and the 11th report of this committee. In this Parliament, since you've been here, we've done that kind of work.
In fact, sir, colleague, this is virtually the exception. I can ask Tyler or anybody around me to remind me differently, but I can't think of anywhere else on this committee that we got so seriously in the ditch that the work we were expected to do was in jeopardy.
I don't think we've ever gotten to that on this one issue other than now, on the one motion where the government is refusing to agree that the only things that will go in the report are things we all agree on. That alone was going to be enough, and it did seize up the work of the committee and created all this problem. The government then of course launched—I focus on this a lot, because a lot of filibusters happen in committee and people don't even know they happen. Sometimes they happen for only 10 or 15 minutes, and the fact that one is about to happen causes someone to say that the last thing they want to do is listen to Christopherson going off. There have to be some words they can use to get past this. There have to be. I exaggerate a little, but that dynamic has a place.
Under one of the proposals you want, sir, and if you retain the right to pass it with just your vote, you will force it down our throats. Whereas right now as a local member, if you need 20, 30, or 40 minutes to explain an issue.... And obviously you know your constituency well. You're a long-serving mayor who leveraged that into a federal seat. You're obviously trusted and respected in your community. I don't know about you, but my community is complex, and very few issues aren't.
I need the time, because of who I am—and I talk a lot—to break it down into the components that I think are best reflecting where my constituents are coming from and why, and why this is either a good idea or a bad idea for my beloved Hamilton. Right now, in my entire time, whether at Queen's Park or here—let's leave it at my time here, I don't have to worry that—tick, tick, tick—I have to get that covered too as we do in the House.
By the way, the limitation in the House on the early debates is 20 minutes with a 10-minute Q and A. Under the proposal you put forward, it would be 10 minutes. You'd go from being able to take as long as you want to convey your point of view reflecting your constituency—which is just as important as mine, and just as important as the Prime Minister's, and just as important as Ms. Mendès'—and you take that time. That's why we have committee work. That's why the rules at committee are different from those in the House, because the House time is different. We're handcuffed with the times that are there. When we get to committee, we deliberately loosen up the rules a little. We call each other by our names sometimes. At least it's not out of order to do so. Most importantly, we can take the time.
The unlimited time is not just a weapon for the opposition to threaten to start a filibuster or to continue one, although that's an important element of it. It's also just the ability to come to a committee meeting and explain something in a way that can't be done in the House. If I can't do it at committee, that means I leave the Hill not feeling that I've fully represented my constituents, because nowhere did I have time to spell it all out. It all had to fit into somebody's preconceived idea of a fair amount of time. Since we accept that in the House but we don't like it, we try to make up for it by creating a lot more latitude. Those of us who have chaired committees know that the parameters of where you allow a member to go are much looser; they're not totally loose, which is why the chair still tells me to get back to the point, but there's a lot more latitude and certainly not the time constraint.
We can have a respectful, stimulating discussion about that, but we can't do it if you and your colleagues on the government side believe that no matter what happens, at the end of that discussion it's your way or the highway, might makes right, and you can use your majority and roll over us. You don't have to be on this side for too long to realize how that would make you feel and what you might do to prevent it. Ergo, maintenant, that's why we're here. That's what all this is about. All this, whatever you want to call it, is all about whether or not we're going to continue to respect each other the way we already have in this Parliament or whether we're going to completely shift and go 180 degrees in a different direction with a different culture and a different attitude that reflects far more the regime we just left than the one that you promised to bring in.
I feel confident enough in the righteousness of that position. Having been in both government and opposition, and identifying committee work as my favourite part of being here on the Hill, I am 100% resolute that it is not in the best interest of our beloved Parliament to go against the advice of our predecessors and to go against the practice of this very committee in this very Parliament. That's the issue.
I have so many places to go, I don't know which one to choose next. I think I'm going to go to this one.
I want to introduce something new. You'll like new. I know when I do something new, you like that, because it's pretty much guaranteed to be non-repetitive, one would think, by definition.
Chair, it is more of a walk down memory lane for you. I stand to be corrected, but I believe it was on March 6 that you tabled on our behalf the 23rd report of this committee. We've issued a lot of reports. We've done a lot of work, good work, co-operative work, work that we all agree on.
This report looks just like the other one. You have to understand the similarities in what we've done before versus where we are now. Literally, those are the two reports. This is the one that I'm making reference to now; and that's the one that I've been making reference to all this evening. They're the same. It's the same work, the same product, the same template. The only thing different is the subject matter.
The other commonality is the issue of consensus. I've already read to you from this report ad nauseam, and I'll forewarn you that I'll have to make reference to it again in the future, but only as a reference, not as a speech. It's a whole new report.
Colleagues, you'll recall that I mentioned earlier—