Absolutely.
My colleague makes a great point. If you know the rules, if they haven't been changed on you, we can all play the game. But changing the rules as you are partway through the game, in the third period or overtime or whatever, doesn't do anybody any good. That's not the way we should be moving forward. It's just not right.
I want to go back to a few different things here. I read the report of this committee that was referenced a number of times, entitled “Interim Report on Moving Toward a Modern, Efficient, Inclusive and Family-Friendly Parliament”. I think one of the unique things in this report—I think Mr. Christopherson mentioned it at the time as well—is that while great recommendations were put forth, in the areas where there was no consensus the committee agreed to not put it forth as a recommendation.
We can table reports—we've done it in the fisheries committee—where we've done a study and not always agreed. We can table differing points of view, and I think that's important.
I'll go back to some of the comments that were in this document, because I think it's important as we move forward.
You can table this and you can say, “Given the lack of consensus the Committee has heard regarding whether the potential benefits of eliminating Friday sittings outweigh the potential drawbacks, the Committee does not intend to propose a recommendation regarding this matter.” Our committee members sat through a study, if I'm understanding this—I've participated in a number of committee studies now—which, I assume, brought witnesses forth. Correct? Depending on the testimony, there was probably some good testimony about eliminating Friday sittings and there was some differing testimony not in support of eliminating Friday sittings.
The committee went back and looked at it. Probably there were some on the government who said, look, we should really put forth a comment about eliminating Fridays. Then those on this side probably said....
I'm just surmising. I don't know how it went back and forth. I don't have the privilege of having that. But it's important to say, because they wrote it down in this interim report, that there was no consensus, meaning there was probably no consensus on the committee and no consensus from the witnesses as well, probably some experts on parliamentary procedure or what have you who came before them. We try to have the best witnesses come forth. These are either industry experts or subject matter experts. We try to bring them forth so that they can give us, outside of this bubble, learned testimony as to the issue at hand that we're studying.
Far be it from me to repeat it, Mr. Chair, but here it said this: “Given the lack of consensus the Committee has heard regarding whether the potential benefits of eliminating Friday sittings outweigh the potential drawbacks, the Committee does not intend to propose a recommendation regarding this matter.” I believe that was tabled sometime in November of last year. Yes?
Here we are four months later. The government has decided now, all of a sudden, that they are the experts. They want you to discuss it again. Talk about a useless waste of taxpayers' dollars. Are there not better things that we can be studying?