That's all right. I bring it up because I think that when you talk about the programming of legislation, that's.... I have a paper here. I won't read the whole thing, because I know David would like to say his piece as well. It states:
Programming was introduced on an experimental basis in 1997-98. Since the beginning of the 2004-05 Session, permanent Standing Orders relating to programming have operated.
They review it every so many years to see that it's running well, in the same vein, I guess, that we do our Standing Orders. It continues:
Following a review of these arrangements in 2000, the Modernisation Committee
—I think this is our equivalent—
proposed new Sessional Orders, which were agreed on 7 November 2000 and then subsequently revised on 28 June 2001. The Sessional Orders agreed on 28 June applied to Session 2001-02.
Let me explain it this way. It's something they did, and guess what? You'll never guess what happened. A consensus came around the fact that this wasn't really a bad thing. It was a pretty good thing. I spoke to the former whip of the Liberal Democrats in the coalition they had. He was part of the junior coalition—one of the surviving nine from the last election—and he agreed. Here's someone who has never been in government—well, at a junior level. Here's someone who never had outright power, but he said the same thing that she did, which was, look, it's just a mature way of doing things.
I don't even know if we can come up with a made-in-Canada version. I don't know, but that's what I wanted to do here in this motion so we can explore that.
Angela Eagle, a sitting Labour MP, said:
I was a minister pre-programming and post-programming [of debates]. ...the then Labour government introduced programming [in order to] make more efficient use of Parliamentary time. Filibustering of legislation was something that confused many of our constituents [and] it was not something that enhanced our democracy.
I don't know if I entirely agree. I think filibustering can be a healthy thing, present time included.
She continued—