I appreciate that, Chair.
I enjoyed the exchange, but I do hope that it makes it a little easier for the member to understand where we're coming from, the process that led us to this point, and then the overreaction on the part of the government when they refused to adjourn. I hadn't seen that since Bill C-23 with Harper, when we thought I was going to do a two-hour filibuster, adjourn, and then come back the next day. They said, “No, you're not leaving.” Suddenly, not only was I in a filibuster, but I was in a filibuster that I wasn't even prepared for. It's a real sneak attack by a majority government that has all the marbles anyway to conduct themselves in that fashion, but then, for the government to do exactly that, in only the second time I've ever seen it, whoa.
I want to end in terms of responding to Ruby by saying that it is possible, in a different.... I'm not guaranteeing anything. I'm just saying that I think it is plausible, even possible, that had there been a different approach, we may still have the same disagreements, but we wouldn't be here at five minutes to eleven on a Wednesday night, spinning our wheels, which is really where we are. It's quite possible, because a different approach got a different result on at least two other occasions, and it wasn't like we didn't do work: we got two good reports. Both of them, I think, were only the first steps. There's more work to be done.
Again, you can take in context what previous parliaments said about this very issue, which was that they couldn't get everything through that they wanted to either, but for everything that they did put in, everyone agreed to it. They said, “It made Parliament work better and we urge you to follow that same sort of model.” It's not black and white, but when you add it all up, I don't think it's too difficult to understand how the opposition benches found ourselves where we are now. I would remind the honourable member, in my last comment on this before I return to my prepared remarks, that we could still do it.
The letter that I've spent maybe a couple of hours on is another attempt by the opposition to offer the government an exit strategy from their own mess. The only reason we're bothering is that we care about these things. If it had been a piece of legislation where you were going in a direction that we didn't agree with, whether you ran on it or not, we would just leave you there twisting.
That would be your problem, not ours. We'd say that we don't agree with you ideologically and we're not about to change, and it would be cut, dried, done, and over, but here we are, making a suggestion, and it's not a suggestion loaded in favour of the opposition. It's the process that Mr. Chrétien followed when he wanted to change the rules.
I won't go into the details, Chair—that wouldn't be right—but Mr. Richards and I have had numerous off-line private discussions with Mr. Simms. I think it's fair to say that for the most part we were the ones making recommendations and Mr. Simms was considering them. We would have a little back-and-forth and, at an appropriate time, he would say, “Okay, I hear what's being said.” Then he would have to go and talk to the folks who he would have to talk to, just like Mr. Richards and I would have to do before we could conclude a final, absolute agreement.
It's hard to make us out as the ones who are being the most difficult. I'm not saying that I'm not being difficult. I am being difficult.