To be honest, I believe that members opposite, particularly backbench members, understand completely what's at stake here. As I said before and firmly believe—this is not to insult any members opposite, because I have great respect and great regard for many members, particularly of the Liberal Party, whom I've come to know through committee and through other personal interactions—this is not any of their doing. This is not a desire that has been brought upon the government House leader from backbenchers clamouring for changes to the Standing Orders. This was purely and simply an initiative brought down from the PMO. They are the people orchestrating this. We all know that, and I won't belabour the point.
Goodness knows that when we were in government we had many initiatives that the PMO wanted to bring forward, and on many occasions we followed through with them. This, however, is different. This goes beyond, as Candice said, any particular piece of legislation, which the government in a majority configuration has the absolute right to bring forward. This is about changing the rules of the game.
Candice, just before you came in I said that I'm sure many speakers before me have used the sporting analogy. I used a different one. I didn't use hockey. I used football. The winning team doesn't have the right to change the rules. That's not the way the game is played. Some would equate politics to a big game, but nonetheless, it simply cannot work that way.
Let me give you another perspective that perhaps you hadn't thought of. I gave you a brief history of how closure came into effect. That was in 1913. It wasn't used again, to my knowledge—at least it wasn't used extensively, and I don't think it was used at all—until 1956 during the great pipeline debate. Then in 1969 time allocation was brought in.
One of the great ironies there was that the outcry from opposition members about the unilateral attempt by the Trudeau government of the time to bring in time allocation was so intense that they had to use closure to pass the time allocation bill.
Think of this, however. Had Parliament not enacted closure in 1913, what would be the situation today? I can certainly recall vividly from when we were in government, because we used time allocation more than 100 times to speed through legislation, the many arguments coming from both of the opposition parties. Our government wouldn't have had the ability to do this. We'd be still debating and looking for consensus somehow, but what this government is trying to do goes far beyond simple closure or time allocation. It goes far beyond that.
I would also suggest that it would be wise of members of the government party opposite who sit on this committee, if they have not already done so, to seek out some independent procedural advice from experts in parliamentary procedure.
Perhaps not all of you, but some of you I am sure are familiar with the late Jerry Yanover, who was a brilliant procedural expert. We have one of our own in our caucus by the name of John Holtby. Between them, those two knew more about procedure than probably any human beings whom I'm aware of. I can assure members opposite of one thing: if Jerry Yanover were alive today, he would be advising you to stop what you're doing.
In fact one of your more learned former colleagues, Mr. Paul Szabo, has had some extremely critical comments about your attempts to change the Standing Orders. I'm sure all of you are aware of those comments, which appeared in the The Hill Times, I believe just today.
Derek Lee, another former Liberal member of Parliament, again a very learned procedural expert—