If you burn me twice, shame on me.
Right now, the opposition does not trust that the government is going to have a meaningful debate or a meaningful discussion. This is why everything has gone on in the House, whether in the discussion or with the challenges during QP, to ask whether it is going to allow the opposition and all members of Parliament to have a say and to vote whether we're going to change.
I think Mr. Christopherson has mentioned that the Standing Orders are our guiding principles, the rules we follow. I think other members of the committee—and I too am just sitting in—have mentioned that these are the rules. We should all have to agree, if we're going to change them arbitrarily, whether that is to make them better. We have to trust that's the idea, that the full intent is it's going to make life better for all MPs and not for one side over the other.
I don't have the benefit of having been here in the previous Parliament. I'm not going to sit here and say that we did things right or others did things wrong. I'm going to say that this type of conversation we're having today is probably what Canadians and what the rest of Parliament want to see, a civilized conversation back and forth. That's what we were elected to do, to have a healthy debate and to be able to come to some form of consensus that we can all agree on.
Mr. Christopherson, in his intervention, has mentioned the report, which I've had the opportunity to read, that was tabled by the chair. There are good comments in there. There are a lot of things in this motion that were discussed in here, but no consensus could be found. They said they chose not to put forth any recommendations at that time on some of the very things that are in this motion.
If we could trust that the motion and the discussion paper put forth were not going to be, as has been said before, rammed down our throats, and that everyone would have a say, then I think a healthy debate could continue, whether it's today or the next day. We've asked a number of times. The opposition—whether it's us, or whether it's our House leaders of our party, whether it's the leadership of our party, whether it's members of our bench, or other members of the parties—has asked repeatedly, and we've not had an answer saying, yes, we will allow that to happen. As a matter of fact, quite the contrary, we haven't.
Perhaps the takeaway is that we need to have that discussion, and that trust has to be rebuilt.
I'll leave it at that. The bottom line is that we can't have that discussion until trust is earned.