Thank you.
Quickly, colleagues, just as way of background, I'm back on PROC. I was previously on PROC for nine years when I was parliamentary secretary to the government House leader when the Conservatives were in power, but for the past five years I have been the chairman of government operations and estimates. I put that in context by saying that during my tenure as chair, we had the same questions come up on a fairly frequent basis. On many occasions the Bloc and the NDP were prevented from asking questions simply because we ran out of time.
What I did—and it was a unilateral and very arbitrary decision that I made—was that on many occasions, I reduced the amount of time in the first and second rounds, which would allow the Bloc and the NDP to ask questions. As an example, if we had one hour of witnesses and the two witnesses presenting were giving 10-minute opening addresses, that would leave 40 minutes for Q and A. I would arbitrarily reduce the first round to five minutes and the second to four minutes, and that would leave two minutes each for the Bloc and the NDP at the end. That worked out very well, but I must say it was not guaranteed. It was just the approach that I took to try to ensure fairness so that my Bloc and NDP colleagues would have ample opportunity to ask questions.
From time to time, there was something else I did in order to allow more time for questions. If we had a government representative, whether a minister or a public service officer who was giving opening comments, I would ask concurrence from the committee members that we would not have those opening statements given verbally but that those opening statements would be delivered. I would ask the committee to allow them to be appended to the minutes of the meeting as if read. That allowed even more time for questions.
My point, Madam Chair, is that at the discretion of the chair, there are many options available if in fact your overriding desire is to allow both the Bloc and the NDP to have questions. I fully support that. That is how I operated when I was a chair.
Monsieur Therrien and Madame Blaney, I'm not sure if there's any way, unless we have unanimous consent, to guarantee those speaking slots. A bit of a leap of faith is required in this committee and in other committees. If both Bloc and NDP members trust the discretion of the chair to do everything in his or her power to ensure that the third and fourth parties in the House have an opportunity to ask questions, that may be the best we can get to.
I would certainly support you, Madam Chair, if in fact you used your discretionary powers to try to ensure that the NDP and the Bloc are not overlooked and are not prevented from asking questions.