Yes, you do. I know. That's why you're dangerous. I have to keep an eye on you, you know.
They identified this growing problem that not only could they not physically fit in the House, but that if they had time constraints like ours, they obviously wouldn't have enough time for members. They asked themselves what they could do to change things that they could all agree on, and that would give backbenchers, say, more of an opportunity to talk about the issues, to present things to the House, or to speak longer. They came up with this novel idea of a parallel House.
It has much reduced powers compared to the House, only a shadow of the powers, but it is recognized as “the Chamber”, and debate that happens there is considered as formal and as important as anything that happens in the House of Commons. We played with that a bit to see where it got us, but for a whole bunch of reasons, especially since it was a whole new concept, it was clear that we weren't.... As for what it would have done, I suspect that we probably could have come up with one or two suggestions in that area to be looked at and thus laid the framework for further discussions for the House leaders to talk about. We would have been very careful about creating a second chamber. We would have erred on the side of caution, but we probably could have found a framework that we could have agreed on. We could have launched it from our dock and sent it off to possibly have life as it was looked at further.
We still might. I don't recall any caucus saying—I can't go too far with this because it was in camera—that it was a horrible idea, that they were formally and ideologically opposed to this, and that they knew they were going to be against any further recommendations. I don't think there was any of that. I think it was a matter of us taking the time it would have taken to learn enough, consider all the variables, and try to come up with some uses that we might agree on, which we would ask our House leaders to reflect further on. It would have taken so much time that it would have affected our timeliness. Remember that at the time we were being very respectful of the government's time frame. I know it sounds shocking that the opposition, especially the likes of me, would be respectful of what the government wanted—