It seems we do have diversity of opinion among Liberal members on the issue of televising the meeting, which is perhaps some progress here. Maybe over time we'll be able to work toward passing the amendment and move forward.
I will at some point share a few more comments. I did want to come back to what I was talking about when we were interrupted by the budget in the early afternoon, namely the specific changes proposed in the discussion paper put forward by the government House leader.
I think I was on some of the issues around programming. Right now we have a procedure of time allocation, which allows the government to move a motion with notice to allocate a set, limited number of days for debate to continue. The government is able to move that motion. What follows the moving of that motion is a period of half an hour of questions directed to the mover of that motion. Similar to question period, some of those questions may be posed by members of the government, but generally speaking those questions are posed by members of the opposition.
The government puts this forward, there's a half-hour period for questions and answers, then there are the bells, then we have a vote on the allocation of time, and then the discussion proceeds. The use of time allocation is never ideal. The ideal way for us to proceed is through discussion, agreement, and consensus among the different actors within our system. That's how normally it's supposed to go.
More and more we're seeing the use of time allocation by this government. At least in the current structure, if I'm not mistaken, there is a sense in which the use of time allocation, per the Standing Orders, occurs only when agreement cannot be reached. The Standing Orders obviously cannot prescribe goodwill in the context of negotiations among House leaders; they cannot necessarily prescribe the degree to which a good faith effort is made to get on the same page, but they do require that there be at least some sort of effort to get on the same page before the time allocation process is undertaken.
Members have every reason to encourage their government to use time allocation as little as possible, because it may well be disruptive to the other normal operations of the House—not to say that it may not be appropriate in certain circumstances, and maybe, depending on the inclination of a particular opposition, it's more necessary in certain environments than others.
Each time it's used, time allocation does provoke some degree of a public conversation around its use, which calibrates the discussion a little. That's one of the things about the current procedure: it does entail this balance, this tension within it.
We now have an alternative system proposed by the government. I think, more honestly, they would say they're going to use time allocation all the time for everything. That's certainly what it looks like to me, but I think they would like to go through this rebranding exercise. This is the sort of rebranding exercise whereby the government automatically time allocates everything, and everybody accepts it.
Sorry, but that isn't going to happen; the opposition is going to say they need some say on how much time is spent discussing particular issues. There's no surprise there. The opposition is going to expect to be able to determine which bills are a priority. If the government says we're going to have six days of debate on Rouge Park, and one day on euthanasia, at that point the opposition is going to say, no, they have a slightly different sense about which bill requires more discussion and which bill, at a particular stage, is in need of less immediate discussion. It's not the sort of thing we would expect the government to do unilaterally.
In the framework established by the motion in the absence of the amendment, however, the government would simply be able to institute their new set of proposals about how the House would work. That would totally undermine the ability of the opposition to be effective as part of the conversation; it would totally undermine the opposition's ability to counter the government over the period of time they want to do so.
I can imagine a situation in which the government might propose legislation that would be particularly relevant to my home province, Alberta, something on which many of the MPs from Alberta would want to speak to and represent the concerns of their communities. If the government felt this were not a priority and was not going to allocate a certain number of days for it, that would create a real problem for members who seek to reflect the specific priorities of the constituents that we are all sent here to represent.
We have a responsibility to represent the concerns and priorities of our constituents whom we've been sent here to represent, and yes, that includes being able to speak on matters of particular concern to us, when we want to, on specific bills. Of course, it can be limited by the decision of government to move time allocation, but it is something that the government must, at least, be held accountable for in each individual instance.
My ability to give speeches in the House of Commons has been limited by the use of time allocation by this government.