We have 121 members of Parliament. In the case of the Liberal Party, what do they have? Someone says it is 156, but whatever it is, it is somewhere in that neighbourhood. You don't just call that many members of Parliament together on five minutes' notice. We all have committees. We have duties in the House of Commons. Times are set aside, obviously.
This is for the benefit of anyone who might be listening out there outside of Parliament. I know it is wishful thinking on my part, or maybe on the part of all of us, to think that Canadians are paying attention to the proceedings of this committee at this point in time, but maybe they are. Who knows? Some people probably are.
The bottom line for those people and for their benefit is that that's why there is time set aside on Wednesday mornings every week for caucuses to meet so that those kinds of conversations can occur. That's the kind of thing that probably should happen with something like this. That is the principle upon which we are standing here today. That is the principle that in the last Parliament the NDP stood with us to fight for as well. That's what we believe should happen.
I want to come back to the argument I just briefly raised, which is about one of my concerns with the motion. This is simply a concern I have. Maybe others share it; maybe they don't, but that's why there is need for conversation.
One of those thoughts for me is that we've always operated.... This is actually the fourth Parliament in which I've served. I sat on the government side through a minority Parliament. I sat on the government side in a majority Parliament. I sat on the opposition side for a majority Parliament, and I'm now sitting on the opposition in a minority Parliament, so I've been through all four kinds of scenarios that can occur.
Ms. Duncan, you would have sat through all four of those scenarios as well, I believe. Maybe it's just the two of us who have done that here, but you understand that as well.
Each of those scenarios is unique for various reasons, but the bottom line is that I have sat on a number of committees. I sat on this committee for some time, but I also sat on a number of other committees. I chaired a couple of different committees as well, so I have a fairly rounded experience with committees as well through the different types of Parliament, sitting as a chair, as a vice-chair, as a regular member, and as a member of a steering committee. I've sat on subcommittees and special committees as well. I have been on a number of special committees. I have had fairly extensive experience having sat in a variety of different scenarios on committees. Probably just about every scenario with committees that you can think of, I've been a part of in some way.
The reason I raise that is not to display my resumé here or anything like that, but to indicate that what we've always had with committees is that there is a chair, which in many cases.... We can actually go back to the lengthy six-week meeting that we had when the chair, I believe, remained in his chair of this committee. It was Mr. Bagnell at the time, who, I will just parenthetically indicate, I'm sure would be having flashbacks right now to that time. He's probably quite glad he was made a parliamentary secretary so he wasn't eligible to be a chair or maybe he'd still be here and having flashbacks—