There is an end to this; it's just not foreseeable really soon.
So, returning to the 23rd report, on March 6, Chair, you rose in the House and you presented this report—proudly, I would assume—on our behalf, just as you did the 11th report, proudly, I would assume, which we.... I have spelled out that we have said in here that this was all done by consensus. You'll recall the wording: in this approach to the study, the committee attached importance to reporting back to blah, blah, blah, and taking into account, and that we would only do it by consensus. I can search for the exact words if you want, but you know they're there.
Turning to the new report, I had been making some reference to the good work we were doing on the Chief Electoral Officer's lengthy report. I think it would take something like 30, 40, or 50 meetings to actually go through that entire report and create our own report. It's a big undertaking. I've done it before in previous parliaments. For the most part, it's just been hard work, not controversial in terms of how we did that work. That was with Mr. Lukiwski, who spent a lot of time on this committee.
Again, you'll recall, Chair, that I had referenced that we have what we call the low-hanging fruit process, that we were doing it in sections. There was some methodology to our approach: we were doing it in sections. The goal was that at the conclusion of each section, we would do an interim report to the House, so that the work we were doing could be fed into the.... Hopefully, ostensibly, the government would take into account what was said here, notwithstanding the uh-oh around Bill C-33. I think we got around that one. Notwithstanding that little bump in the road—put that over here—for the most part, the whole idea was that we would issue reports, I think at least three, in sections, and we decided internally that we would approach those things that we could possibly, somehow, humanly find agreement on, and put those in the report.
Those things that clearly didn't lend themselves to an obvious readily available consensus we put aside and put in another pile, to take a shot at on another day. This, I think, is the first one. Whether it was first or second, I can't recall. I don't know if you can recall, Chair. Anyway, this was the first or second one.
I see the analyst offering something. Was it the first one? Thank you very much. That confirms that this was the first of at least three, probably four, reports by the time they did a separate one trying to tackle the issues that were going to be tougher. Probably they'd be thinner reports, but there would have been at least four in total. This was the first one.
This is also, again, part of the problem with the timing, such that the minister came in and asked us to do some selective work on the rest of the report, and report to her by May 19, and then this other thing landed in front of us, and originally they wanted it done by June 2.
I mean, really, who's thinking over there, or supposed to be?
Anyway, that remains a problem. It would be nice to get at it, because it would mean we've dealt with this problem. The only way this goes away is if we, the opposition, get our rights.
As per the format of the last one, you'll recall that it was pretty much the same report that “The Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs has the honour to present....” It was the 11th there; it's the 23rd here. This was an “Interim Report on Moving Toward a Modern, Efficient, Inclusive and Family-Friendly Parliament”. This is “An Interim Report in Response to the Chief Electoral Officer’s Recommendations for Legislative Reforms Following the 42nd General Election”. Neither one is little stuff. This is all deep, complex things, and yet look: Mr. Badawey was talking about how much he enjoyed that discussion. That's because once you get into that kind of respectful give and take where you're not trying to beat each other up and you're not trying to get one better on the other party, where you're actually working together, that's where it's not only enjoyable but productive; unlike this, which is non-productive, other than it's us defending ourselves.
On the second page, we, all of us, government members, chair, vice-chairs, members, all of us said this in doing our report. Remember, this is us, the same committee, the government members, the very same people:
In conducting its work, the Committee attached importance to completing its study of the first two chapters of the CEO's report and providing the House with its assessment of the CEO's recommendations in a timely manner.
Again, I want to point out how co-operatively we are working with the government. “Timely manner”—the only thing that's timely, in terms of the government and its agenda for bringing legislation, is getting our feedback, and, if it's true to its word, taking into account what we've had to say and factoring that in to help inform its decision. That's respect.
We could have caused the government some grief if we collectively said, “You know what? We have a great chance here. We have this report that's going to take 50 meetings anyway, so what do you say we stretch it and make it 75 and really make it hard for them to get anything done?” We didn't do that. We did nothing remotely like that. It was not even suggested, not even as a joke. We all take this work seriously.
This committee is, in some ways, like the steering committee of the House. This is the only committee that meets at the same time every week. The only committee. Every other committee rotates, but we don't. Every other committee actually gets created only when we generate a report that says it should be. I'm not trying to pretend that we're making all the decisions around here; it's the makeup of the committee, and it comes from the caucuses and the whips.
But my point is that this is unlike any other committee. Everybody on here, from the newest rookie to the oldest veteran—