I concur with everything Mr. Chan just said. He's trying to lay all his cards on the table. He actually doesn't know, to some degree, which cards he's going to be dealt, with regard to the issues like the minister's availability, so it's unreasonable to try to pursue this further until he is able to find out what some of those cards are—to keep the metaphor going. I think that all makes sense.
I also agree with everything Mr. Christopherson said. I have a few suggestions as well for changes to the Standing Orders. Actually, I don't agree with quite everything, David. I think we may find more goodwill than we anticipate on the part of the government. I don't want to sound like I'm Elizabeth May, and always giving the Liberals the benefit of the doubt, but on this occasion I think there's goodwill from everybody at the table. Certainly I know there are other people in the Liberal Party who have tons of goodwill on this kind of thing.
I want to add one last thing, if I could. This is actually a request to our analyst.
Mr. Christopherson raised an interesting point. Although these events happened when I was there, I did not absorb them. I was probably sitting at my desk in the House Commons and reading a book instead of paying attention. But we are all members of parties that have been the third party in this place. I remember being the senior researcher for the Reform Party caucus when it was the third party, and the Bloc Québécois was the second party. The NDP has had its experience being in third place, so have the Liberals fairly recently. The point he's raising is a valid one. I just wondered if on that particular matter we could ask the analyst. Presumably, the way things go, you have all summer to look at what the practices are in the various legislatures with regard to the particular matter he raised of speeding up votes.
I don't know if that's a matter of a different practice that has become a convention, as opposed to being a matter of a standing order. There's nothing that prevents you from taking a practice and making it into a standing order, but it would be good to know what the details are of the model, particularly the Ontario model, but possibly others that are out there, to allow us, if we choose, to move forward productively on that particular point.
