We had started the study, and, informally, as a committee, we had decided that we would once again to discuss the low-hanging fruit and to try to get all those ideas and thoughts together that we could have consensus on, put those out, and then get back to the hard stuff. That's what I recall working on.
I was disappointed with that interim report, because I was very passionate on a lot of issues. I thought there were so many good ideas that had been brought up in committee by experts, but they never made it into that report because we had decided at that time that we'd just do the low-hanging stuff that we could agree on.
We had never restricted ourselves and locked ourselves into talking about only the things we had unanimous consent on. We also thought we were going to come back to that study and after putting out the low-hanging fruit, we'd come back to the hard stuff.
This study that we're being asked to undertake through Mr. Simms' motion would just be a continuation of the Standing Orders debate, of that first interim report that we had put out, because we had talked about a lot of these things with the witnesses we had before us. Of course, we'd have to strive towards having all-party consensus. Nothing would seem better than being able to present a report to the House that we had consensus on. But how are we ever going to get to the hard stuff if we're always only going to agree on the easy stuff? We already put the easy stuff out. We did it. We talked about it being great, but what were the recommendations that came out of that? It's great that in the votes after QP, the government, the House leaders I guess, have already come to an agreement. Whenever they can come to an agreement, it's great that they do so and move the votes up.
That was something like a pilot project that the House leaders just started doing. We sat back, and we thought that this was a great improvement. Everyone was able to try it out a bit. Then after trying it out, we realized that this was accepted and efficient, and we didn't have to run back to our offices, have half a meeting, open up a book, close it five minutes later, and run back to the House again for a vote. This is effective, so this is a good idea. Trying things out sometimes can cause us to have that all-party support on a lot of things. I think that's an ideal.
However, we should still talk about things that maybe we don't have all-party support on. There's no harm in getting that discussion started. We had started it before, and I was disappointed after our interim report came out, because I had hoped for so much more to be in there. There were a lot of things that we needed to come back to and iron out the wrinkles a little more on. Maybe we could have even gotten all-party support, but maybe not. Maybe we could have a majority in the committee, and then we could have dissenting ideas. It could be put to the House. Maybe there could be an opportunity to try to see if we could have more than just a majority in the House on these rules. These are things that we could talk about going forward. They're options, but right now we are really limiting ourselves by not exploring those options.
That's my recollection. I know you're very proud of the work that we did before. I am proud of what we engaged in, the conversations, the discussions, and the witnesses we had before us. I bumped into some of those witnesses recently, especially the ones from Equal Voice. They are also very excited to hear that we're going to be revisiting this topic, and that perhaps some of the recommendations that they made before this very committee might be taken into consideration this time and find their way into a recommendation. Because at that time, that low-hanging fruit was really low-hanging fruit; it was rotting fruit. We had put it out there, and it was stuff that we had already been doing. The buses are a great thing. I know that you're very passionate about the buses, David, but that's not the hard stuff. The stuff that we put out was extremely easy. It wasn't earth-shattering. It didn't move. It didn't create for a modern, new way of doing things here in the House of Commons.
I think one of the recommendations was also, “oh, well, the House of Commons has also implemented a nanny service.” They've already done so, so let's continue with that program. We can put an endorsement, our seal of approval, that members of Parliament can pay for nanny service and have them on call, which would be done through the House of Commons. Once again, that's something that was already being piloted.
A lot of what we just did in that interim report was to just put our seal of approval on things. We didn't even scratch the surface of actually modernizing and making our time more efficient and effective here and in our ridings. As many of my colleagues have said, I'd love to get back to that. It's not a final report; it's an interim report.
We never made those types of conditions before when we started studying it. I know we keep talking about when the previous House leader came. I remember the House leader sitting here and talking about his mandate letter and the things he wanted to change. At that time we never said we were not going to engage in this conversation unless we had all-party support or unanimous support. We got to work.
We started talking about it. Within the committee we agreed to do the stuff that we could agree on right away and to get that out to the House. We were going to get our ideas on paper and then come back later.
That's really all I request, that we get back to it. Let's discuss something that's not the rotted fruit on the ground.
Thank you.