On division? Okay, that means we respectfully disagree but will let it go forward. We'll let it go, then, but I'm right. I'm right in recognizing your point. How's that?
That, then, is pretty much what happened. It was like a bat turn. In the beginning—this is the thing that really boggles the mind—the first two reports were entirely consistent with the approach the government promised. That's why I have not been able to say to them, “you haven't kept a single promise when it came to standing committees”, because it's not true; they did keep some. Sometimes we had to push them a little to do so, but it was nothing like this.
I don't know whether it's right or not, but the cold calculation has to be that it's worth taking the heat now.
I've sat on house management committees in government. You go to the next election, and you work backwards. This is not a big secret; every cabinet does it. You start at some point, once you are settled in and have dealt with the crises and the big things and get a little bit of breathing time. The first thing you start doing early on is identifying that here is “E” day and here's today, and you ask, “what do we want to achieve and where do we want to be by E day? What are the things we want to run on by way of showing Canadians that we kept our promises and that doing so has made their lives better and our country stronger?” Fill in the blanks for provinces, territories, or cities, but pretty much that's the game plan.
The government calculation seems to be that it is worth taking whatever comes; that all of this and all the negative stuff is worth it, just as with the calculation around turning their back on their promise for electoral reform—“This is the last election we'll ever have under first past the post.” That's going to be a running Canadian gag for...how long?
Then they come on, and all of a sudden....
Take the Friday thing as an example, because it's so stark. The government has been burbling about Friday. They have this thing about Friday. I don't know exactly what it is, but they are really fixated on Friday.
We dealt with it. They knew it was coming. It was one of their big issues. They knew we were going to deal with it in the 11th report, and—pardon me, it was in the 23rd report—and we said we can't agree. Our report—
Actually it was, I think, the 11th report. Thanks.
Do you see the new friends? You're doing a good thing: you are making new friends of old enemies—on the other side of the House, but measure these things as you will. Thank you very much, Todd. I appreciate that.
It says:
Given the lack of consensus the Committee has heard regarding whether the potential benefits of eliminating Friday sittings outweigh the potential drawbacks, the Committee does not intend to propose a recommendation regarding this matter.
Previous parliaments have told us that you, the future parliaments, are in our opinion better off to not bring in a change that is supported by everyone than to bring in a change that, even if it in some ways makes it better, does not have buy-in from everybody on the committee. You are doing Parliament a bigger....
Remember, this is not partisan stuff. They are talking parliaments to parliaments. They are talking to us from the past into the future and saying you're better off only implementing things you all agree on rather than following the efficient process of letting the government dictate what the rules are. That's what they told us, and that's the advice we took for two previous reports in this same Parliament, in this same committee, on the same subject. It's maddening.
It's maddening because it doesn't make any sense. That calculation, again, to finish the thought, was that whatever the damage now, it's worth doing because it gives us the ability to have the deliverables we want for the next election.