There would be a few people—Mr. Genuis included, and Mr. Lamoureux would be another example—who would be really rich if that were ever proposed in this Parliament. Had the Liberal Party been able to go forward with the changes to the Standing Orders they tried to make in the last Parliament, the Prime Minister would be quite poor because he would make very little, as he was going to try to be here only one day a week, but that's another story.
Mind you, I guess his trust fund would still be there, so he'd be okay. Anyway, that's another aside.
The bottom line is that—obviously, as someone who is a Conservative, I believe in fiscal responsibility and I am a fiscal conservative—that argument is a hard argument to make to Canadians, that MPs should be paid by the word or that they should be paid extra for being a third vice-chair of some committee or something like that. I think that would be a hard argument to pass by many Canadians.
That's really a secondary thing in my mind. It is something I think was worth raising, because I am a fiscal conservative and I do believe that's something we need to be considering when we're looking at something like this. Far more important is the principle that, first of all, all members and all parties are affected by these changes. The history of changes to the Standing Orders being done with that kind of consent, which we established in the last Parliament with this committee, is important.
Again, I believe that when we're talking about this kind of change, there should be a conversation that occurs among the parties and within the parties. In other words, caucus members, members of other committees and the caucuses themselves should have the ability to have some conversation about this, and then there should be conversation among the parties.
When this was raised this morning, we recessed for a while, and I believe that during that recess there were different conversations that occurred among different parties. That was a good start, but obviously there wasn't a resolution to that, because here we are.
My argument, and the reason I moved to adjourn the debate, was that it would allow that to happen, and that's what is going to happen ultimately here anyway. It's unfortunate that you all had to sit and listen to me and to others for an hour and 10 minutes, when we could have been doing things that probably you would have enjoyed a lot more, or that would have been more productive for you.
I do appreciate some of my colleagues indicating that they're enjoying it, but I wonder how genuine those sentiments are. The bottom line is that having a debate here, instead of having those conversations, is unfortunately also not letting us do what I think we need to accomplish today, which is to get those routine motions dealt with so that other committees can understand and see what sort of precedent is being set by PROC, so they can get going with their work.
There are a lot of very important things that need to occur with these committees and there are important issues to be dealt with. We're in a minority Parliament, so these committees have that much more importance and ability to actually impact things that are important to Canadians, which will impact their lives and their future.
It's really unfortunate that this will not occur as quickly as it should because we weren't able to get to something that we needed to get to, especially since we all understand that the outcome of this is going to be that those conversations are going to occur anyway, so we could have dealt with those things. That's quite unfortunate.
The principle that all members are affected, I mentioned this briefly earlier, but I did say I wanted to come back to it, and I will now. In the last Parliament, when the government at that time proposed a number of changes to the Standing Orders, the primary ones among them were the ones that received the most negative reactions from Canadians.
The first was the idea that the Prime Minister would be required to be here and held accountable to Parliament, and therefore to Canadians, for only one day a week. I've certainly heard over the last little while that the Prime Minister was largely AWOL following the election and that he has taken mostly holiday time in that period. That's something I've heard many times from constituents and other Canadians. They're quite offended by the fact that he was just re-elected to his job and feels like he can essentially take a leave of absence and hand over his responsibilities to someone else he has appointed to sort of do his job for him. That's been very offensive to a lot of Canadians. They have been quite concerned about that.
You can understand why they would be concerned about this idea that he be required to come here only one day a week. It seems to be a pattern for him. He doesn't really.... I think he likes having the title. He likes the prestige and he likes the star status. He likes all those things, but he doesn't really want to do the job or do the work, and when he does do the work, it seems to be just to reward his own friends or to reward himself, and that's not really in the best interests of Canadians.
I can give a number of examples of that, but I'll set those aside for just a second, because I want to get to some of the other points about the changes to the Standing Orders that were proposed. The idea that the Prime Minister would have to come and be held accountable to Parliament for only one day a week was something that many people were.... As I indicated earlier, I received thousands of emails, as did other members of the committee—those same emails—from Canadians who were really upset by that.
Then there was the idea that all of Parliament would sit just four days a week. I know that many Canadians think it would be wonderful to have to work only four days a week, but that's not the case for most Canadians. They were quite concerned about that.
In my mind, yes, there are of course arguments to be made. Just because Parliament isn't sitting, that doesn't mean MPs aren't working, of course. They're in their ridings, meeting with constituents, etc. Those are legitimate arguments, understandably, but what it does mean, with certainty, is that it's one day less that the government is there to be held accountable to Canadians, especially in question period, but in other ways as well. It's one less opportunity for members to bring forward things such as private members' bills, which are their opportunity to have an impact on changes for the country.
Actually, that's worth fleshing out just a little, because not all Canadians understand how private members' business works. At the start of this Parliament, like all Parliaments, there is in fact—and people are often shocked to hear this—a lottery that occurs. Essentially, just like you would draw if you were trying to win Lotto 6/49, you draw to try to win the right to bring forward, as a private member, legislation or a motion that gets debated in the House of Commons and has a chance to pass.
I've been quite fortunate in the four draws that I've been a part of. Well, twice I wasn't very fortunate, actually; twice I drew very near the bottom of the list and that meant I would not get an opportunity. That was in this Parliament and in the first one I sat in, but in the middle of those, in the second and third Parliaments I sat in, I drew quite high—very high, in fact—and I knew I would have a very quick opportunity to bring forward legislation.
I've been quite fortunate that both in government and in opposition I was able to have private members' business pass. It's a pretty rare thing to do it in opposition, and it's also quite rare for anyone to have done it twice. In fact, I bet you that I am among a very select number of people on that one. I consider myself very fortunate.
Those changes were very significant. We were able to make a change to the Criminal Code that would allow for our communities to be safer. We were also able to push forward the idea of providing for better compassion and concern for parents who have lost a child.
Those were opportunities to do that, but I received those by way of a lottery system. The reason I raise this is that, when the government was talking about the idea of removing some of the time that Parliament would sit, that would likely have had the impact that less private members' business would have the opportunity to proceed. Because that was the case, many people objected to that, both as MPs and as individual Canadians.
As I've just indicated, there already is a difficulty. Not all members of Parliament get the opportunity to do that in Parliament. We have these conversations with MPs so that we understand who's going to get those opportunities and who's not. As an example, in this Parliament, I have some ideas that I'd like to see brought forward as private members' business, but I actually won't get that chance. What I've had to do instead is look at those lists to see who drew in a higher spot than I did and hope that I can convince one of my colleagues to maybe bring that idea forward because they think it's also a good idea. That's kind of how that works.
Those were some of the things that were being changed.
Now, one thing that has been put forward today in terms of suggestions on other ways that this could be dealt with is something that, again, conversations could happen about, if and when we get to that point. We'll get to that point at the end of this meeting, in which we actually could have dealt with other things, but I know that a Liberal member proposed this in one of the other committees, in my understanding.
It's this idea. Why not have a discussion about whether there could be a change made so that the other opposition parties...? In fact, I don't know if there would even need to be a change to the Standing Orders to provide for this, because my understanding of the way it sits now is that the second vice-chair is required to be a member of one of the other opposition parties. If the opposition parties want to have opportunities to be vice-chairs, why couldn't there be an opportunity to split those chairs of all the committees? We could even go so far as to split some of the chairs of the committees rather than having government chairs. That's another option. There are a variety of different options that could be proceeded with here, but there need to be some conversations about what occurs, and if we were to have a vote today, that's not happening.
Those changes were proposed at that time. As the chair will well remember, there was that six-week-long debate. I can't remember how many hours the committee sat for during that six-week period. I don't know if anyone can refresh my memory.