That was part of the mandate of the present government, for sure, but it was something that appeared to be happening, as what an economist would call a secular change. It is a long-term change. Regardless, if the tide comes in and goes out, any individual wave as the tide is coming in may be lower on the shoreline than it was a minute before, a second before, but not lower than the average of waves rolling in and out an hour ago. It's a secular trend, as they call it, and the secular trend is toward greater civility. The very fact that we constantly find the current level of civility insufficient indicates that there is less and less room for incivility, or catcalling, or whatever, to be practised, so it shrinks and shrinks.
The irony here is that if nobody were complaining about it, the situation would probably get worse. However, in saying that, there is no need for Standing Order changes to bring greater civility. It's happening all around us and the tools are already there.
Now we go to the next promise, which was allowing more time for questions and answers. Here, Mr. Chair, I want to just tell you about a treasure hunt that I went on. I went through the Standing Orders looking for a discussion of the length of questions and it's not a matter of the Standing Orders. It's a practice that's developed. It's that agreement.
I'll go through it in more detail later. It's a fascinating and very relevant story that can serve as a guide to us in this committee, as we try to find ways in the committee, and also in the House as a whole, of moving toward what could be a helpful change. Certainly, it is something that the government has promised to do. It is there in their election platform.
I should mention that one thing that's unclear is the statement, “allow more time for questions and answers”. That is actually an imprecise promise. It could mean, as I see it, one of several things. It could mean longer questions and answers. Currently, they are 35 seconds per question and answer in question period. It could be that what was intended was to move that upward, say to 45 seconds or to a minute, as is done in other legislatures in the Westminster tradition. That's one thing it could mean. What might have been meant—perhaps this came up in one of the Prime Minister's speeches during the election—was to move to a longer question period, so that we'd go from 45 minutes daily to an hour daily or something like that. I don't know. Certainly, that's conceivably what was meant. It could involve some kind of structural shift to the nature of how questions are asked.
We have questions. Everybody knows how this works. Everybody who has been in opposition knows how this works. If you hear an answer to an oral question you've asked that you deem, in your own sole discretion, to be unsatisfactory or inadequate, you fill out a form. You ask the pages to give you the form. The form indicates that you weren't satisfied with the answer from Minister X, so you would like to have the chance to ask further questions as part of the adjournment proceedings. That is governed by a standing order. A standing order dictates how that is done and the nature of the form. Moreover, the standing order indicates how long the questions and answers are. I think it was in the 38th Parliament...it was the first one I served in and the first one you served in back in 2000. During that period, a change was made, in addition to a four-minute question and a four-minute answer, to allow for a one-minute supplemental question and answer. This was designed to catch up on any loose ends that had not been dealt with or that had raised a new question.
To be honest, I'm not sure this works perfectly. It seems to me that we get more heat than light in that final one-minute, back-and-forth session, but it does produce positive results some of the time. At any rate, there was a standing order that existed, that was changed in 2000 by the Special Committee on the Modernization and Improvement of the Procedures of the House of Commons that was set up under the Chrétien government.
This was one of the recommendations made unanimously by that committee, and I was the very first person to ask a question under that new procedure with the one-minute question and answer. I can contemplate the possibility of a standing order change being required if we're talking about changing either the length of question period or about doing something that involves questions in adjournment proceedings, or that involves questions such as the ones we have periodically when the minister will come and answer questions for an evening sitting of the House.
That also required a change to the Standing Orders. Some officials come along to assist with more technical questions that may arise. They usually sit at a little desk that looks about the size of a card table. Three of them sit there to assist the minister in answering any question.
We then all sit as a committee of the whole. Members don't have to sit in their own seats. Because it's a committee, we can even bring food into the Commons, a rule that I tested once by bringing in an apple and placing it quite prominently on my desk to see whether it would be—