That, I can't say. I wasn't in the House when it was debated. I wouldn't say it was any longer. In the past, there have been questions of privilege that have been discussed for several days. That one only went to question period that day, so the length of time was significantly condensed. We didn't go past question period until the motion was moved. I would say no. That certainly could be an argument that certain members are making, but it was from 10 o'clock to two o'clock, so we're talking about fewer than four hours of debate on a question of privilege. I wouldn't say that it was exceedingly long.
As I said, in the past, discussions of questions of privilege have gone on for many days. The government does have within its rights the ability to shut down a debate on privilege and force a vote, which is the method that has been used in the past, with a motion of closure requiring that the question be put. That would have been the appropriate manner. At least the House could have said yes or no and taken the appropriate action.
Moving to the orders of the day killed the question of privilege. Under the rules of our House, under O'Brien and Bosc, there is no way to revive a superseded question of privilege. For a concurrence motion or any other motion of the House, there are other mechanisms to do so; even an opposition day motion would be brought to a vote. But in this one case, by moving to the orders of the day, the government killed a privilege motion. Again, this is unprecedented. There's no alternative. The Speaker ruled today that it is an unprecedented situation in which he, as Speaker, was actually finding new ground, new territory, that will in the future be used for very interesting precedents.