Okay, my memory didn't fail me.
There are three methods, and the method we're most familiar with is the third method, where the government House leader says agreement could not be reached and therefore he is giving notice of time allocation. The next day in the House, a minister—it doesn't have to be the government House leader, but often it is—rises and moves a motion of time allocation, allocating a certain number of days. Typically, as we've seen in this Parliament, it's a single day, but there's nothing preventing it from being two days, three days, four days, whatever the will of that House leader or government might be.
That's the one we're most familiar with, and that's the one we've been seeing in the past several months. There are also two other options for time allocation, which I think would reflect what we can call “programming”. This would be a discussion among parliamentarians and, typically, the House leaders. So far in this Parliament, we've seen an example of agreement with one other political party or, in this case, a majority of political parties. With three parties, it's two out of three to allow the second method to happen. This happened with the bill on safe injection sites, Bill C-37.
That was an example where time allocation was moved without notice. Typically, you have to give at least a day's notice that this will be moved. In that situation, notice does not need to be given if a majority of parties have come to an agreement. In that case, the New Democrats and the Liberals did come to an agreement on time allocation. The time allocation motion could be moved without giving a day's notice, and then it moves to discussion in the House.
The first one, and it's not common—we don't need to change the Standing Orders to do this—is time allocation by agreement of all the political parties. In the current case, it would be the Liberals, the Conservatives, and the New Democrats. This would be done through what the British call “the usual channels”, whether it's through the weekly House leaders' meeting or through discussions amongst the key players. In that case, however, notice doesn't have to be given at all. Time allocation could be moved and the programming for that piece of legislation would be set aside. When agreement can be reached, and often it would be the preferable way of organizing the House calendar, the House leader can move such a motion without notice, saying that agreement has been reached among the political parties that on Bill XYZ we will have three days of debate at second reading. It can be neatly done up. In that way, when debate does collapse, or when time expires—debate doesn't have to collapse, but it may collapse on its own—it is duly noted and dealt with accordingly.
It's a way that we can actually undertake a lot of what would be considered programming within the current discussion. I know in the other place they've introduced a discussion paper recommending a business committee, which would then allocate time based on the results of that committee. It wouldn't be a method I would necessarily want to use, because it would be giving power to a committee that may not be accountable to their caucuses or to—