Interrupt me if you want to get back on that, Mr. Marston.
I thought I might take the opportunity to do a couple of things before we wrap up for the day. First of all, I welcome back old members, the previous members, of the committee. That includes Mr. Hiebert who, unfortunately, isn't here with us at this moment; Mr. Sweet; Professor Cotler; and Mr. Marston. Second, I welcome the new members of the committee. We're glad to have you here.
I'd like to take a minute to talk about how this subcommittee has worked in the past, about the culture that has developed. The culture was there before I arrived at this subcommittee, and I arrived in the 39th Parliament. So it was there when the guiding spirits of the committee, at the time, were Professor Cotler, and Wayne—who I think was here at the time—Mario, and Jason Kenney. Among them they developed a culture, which regrettably is unique on the Parliament Hill, of working by consensus, avoiding votes, and avoiding confrontation when possible. It's not always possible but they concluded, very rightly, that the nature of the work we do is not partisan and that we should do what we can to avoid having this committee develop into what happens in some other committees, where everything becomes a proxy battle for partisan advantage. That can only be maintained through the personalities of the people who are here. I think it just takes one or two people changing for that whole system to break down. It has worked phenomenally well. We are quite literally the only subcommittee or committee that functions that way.
This does not mean that the rules of the House are suspended. In the last Parliament, the whip of the Bloc Québécois was concerned enough, on hearing how our committee operated, that he felt we were trying to unilaterally suspend the rules and he came by to sit in on a meeting. We were able to reassure him that wasn't the case. Anybody can, at any point, interrupt—not interrupt, but politely insist on their rights as a member of Parliament, which include the right to call votes, introduce motions at certain times, or move away from the consensus model. There are times when that just speeds things up. Maybe we're not coming to a consensus and, as chairman, I'm very reluctant to be the one to initiate a break from the consensus model. I want one of you to do that job, so one of you has to say that maybe we should move away from consensus and have a vote. But consensus works well.
I see Mr. Marston, so I'll stop there.