Remarkable, and there's an interesting thing about our Standing Orders with respect to answering questions—and I've only read them half a dozen times or so—in that it's my sense of the Standing Orders that there's no reference as to who ought to answer particular questions. It is presumed that the government speaks as a whole.
With the exception of questions that can be asked of committee chairs—that is, the exception where people who are not members of the government, and who could even be members of the opposition, respond to questions—when the opposition poses a question to the government, the government responds. You could ask a question about defence spending and have the parliamentary secretary for sport answer it. You might ask why that is happening, but in the context of question period, it is presumed that this person is speaking on behalf of the government. That's why the Standing Orders have not traditionally prescribed a particular day or particular persons to be responding to particular questions.
In fact, this week, I think, we had an important question posed to the justice minister. The justice minister may not have been mentioned in the asking of the question, but it was a question about judicial appointments and the crisis we have in terms of appointments. Partway through that round of questions, I saw the government House leader lean over and make some kind of signal, and then the industry minister stood up and answered a question about appointments.
I thought that was a bit strange. The industry minister is also responsible for economic development in Quebec and in other regions of the country. He's fairly busy. I didn't know that appointing judges was part of his job as well, but he was called upon to answer the question, which illustrates that in terms of our Standing Orders, maybe for reasons of strategy or for reasons that are hard to comprehend, some members of the government answer questions when you don't expect them to. I know that Minister MacAulay was eagerly trying to answer questions that others were answering. Members know how much we appreciate hearing the interventions of Minister MacAulay.
There's nothing to prevent the Prime Minister from standing up and answering every question. What's interesting, by the way, as he mentioned during the brief introduction of our guest speaker today, is that he is also the minister for youth, yet he doesn't answer questions for the minister for youth. The Prime Minister chooses to answer questions when he wishes and not to answer questions when he wishes, even when they are posed directly to him, whether or not he is present.... Well, I suppose he doesn't answer questions when he's not present in the House, obviously, but when he's there, he chooses to answer questions or not, whether or not they are posed to him.
The idea that somehow.... This is one of I think only two changes to the Standing Orders that were mentioned in the Liberal platform, but the idea that this is even an idea for the Standing Orders is a little strange. The idea that the Standing Orders would prescribe that on a given day every week the Prime Minister would answer questions strikes me as odd, because we do accept that there are going to be certain times when the Prime Minister might have to be gone for the entire week because of international travel, for important meetings happening abroad or whatever the case may be. Perhaps he's on an island somewhere and just can't get back because there's no available commercial travel. That could be a situation that could prevent the Prime Minister from being here.