Yes, well it was unexpected, so much appreciated, and incredibly helpful. Thank you.
This is an interesting discussion. I will respond to Madam Sahota, who made some good points. That's why I listened carefully, because I knew she would.
First of all, I would take a little exception. I'm not sure how many of the changes we recommended you could call rotted fruit, but I'm probably splitting hairs here. It is true to say that they were the things that we agreed on. I think it's also fair to say that there was some of it that didn't come as easily as you make it sound. We did have to struggle with it. We did have to ask our analysts for help, and we had to work at it.
That speaks to a number of things. It also speaks to the complexity and difficulty. A lot of these rules are not straightforward. That's why we have clerks and a full table in the House to advise the Speaker, because there are so many rules, implications, and precedent settings when circumstances arise that this is complex stuff. I know you don't mean to suggest that we basically did nothing because it was only things that we agreed on, but I would go halfway to meeting you in recognizing, and I think I made some reference to it, that the really hard work was still ahead of us, the things we hadn't agreed on. I will also acknowledge that we did not make a hard and fast rule that, from beginning to end, everything we do has to be in agreement. Neither did we say it wouldn't be. We just jumped in, and I suspect, in your raising that, you were, by comparison, saying that in some ways all you asked for here was an opportunity to go through these things, to see how far we can get, and then see where that takes us.
There are a lot of different answers. The one that comes to mind goes back to the beginning of my remarks tonight, that in both these instances, it was a respectful approach to this committee from the minister directly involved. In the case of the House leader, he personally came, gave us his thoughts, his rationale, and his reasons, and we were comfortable enough that there was nothing going on other than exactly what he said. Within days we started work.
This time, it was very different. There were no phone calls between the House leaders. Normally on something like this—and there is no pro forma process—there would be some kind of contact with the other parties to say they're about to initiate something. They're going to table a discussion paper, and they'll make sure we get it in an hour. I'm just making up courtesies that are extended on a regular basis from different parties that have been in power in different parliaments and legislatures. It's not unusual there. It is a goodwill approach for the government House leader to say, “I'm going to be tabling this thing at 4:00. I'm going to be sending to your office a copy of it at 2:00. This is our intent. Shortly after, you're going to see a motion from one of the members of our committee. Here's what it's going to say. This is what we're hoping to do.”
I mean, if the government was being consistent with previous approaches, that would have been the approach. As it was, at best, we didn't know. I'm on this committee, so I paid particular attention when I found out this document that the government had was sort of dropped from on high, a discussion paper. Okay, well, there's not a lot new there. We knew that the government wanted to do things in this area. We'd had this discussion. There was nothing new. I didn't see anything particularly evil in the fact that they just dropped it, but a little alarm bell went off. Then when the motion came out a couple of hours later, all of a sudden it was, “Whoa, wait a minute. What's going on?” Why the sudden change in approach, especially with a motion that includes a timeline that is not a recommendation or a request respectfully made by a cabinet minister but a hard deadline put in by a government member?