Mr. Fleury will now take leave of us. We all wish him well.
Okay, continuing on with committee business, we're going to try to clear up once and for all the problems associated with the speaking arrangements we have at committee. Of course, we gave you some documents here a few minutes ago.
We've been operating on a variety of different motions here. The first one we had was a motion by Mr. Siksay on May 8, 2006. I'm not going to go through it all, but it was to have a seven-minute round for each party. Five minutes would be allocated to each questioner, alternating between the government and the opposition parties. I'm sure you can remember when we had that arrangement. That was working quite well, I thought. There was no discussion on that motion when Mr. Siksay brought it forward for discussion.
Then, of course, as the clerk informed me, on May 15 we had a motion from Mr. Wilson. The motion, the one we've been using over the last couple of meetings, is that the individual is given 10 minutes to make an opening statement. Then, at the discretion of the chair, during the questioning of witnesses, seven minutes is allocated to the first questioner of each party, and thereafter, five minutes is allocated to each subsequent questioner of each party until all members have had a chance to participate, after which, if time permits, a new round commences.
Now, we have had some disagreement on that, and I think the chair has been working quite hard to come up with a third option, which I've given you. Does everyone have this option before them? I think you do.
So up for discussion, prepared for the chair of the standing committee by the clerk, is:
That witnesses from an organization be given ten (10) minutes to make their opening statement; and that, at the discretion of the Chair, during the questioning of witnesses, there be allocated seven (7) minutes for the first questioner of each party and that thereafter five (5) minutes be allocated to each questioner who has not yet had a chance to participate, in the following order:
And you see the order that has been given to you.
So I'm just hoping I got it. Now we'll have discussion. Hopefully, this will be the last one, and we can get operating on something or other.
We'll go to Mr. Karygiannis and Mr. Telegdi.