Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I listened to Mr. Tonks, and listened to his suggestion that we adopt the principle of “if it ain't broke, don't fix it”. But that only applies if you're dealing with the same whatever. If we're talking about a car, yes, that might be the case. But what happened between the last Parliament and this Parliament is that we have a different car. It's a completely different automobile. It doesn't apply to the circumstances the way it used to. So that idea doesn't fit the situation at all, unfortunately.
Looking at the proposal that my colleague Mr. Allen put forward, I think it's important to know that the opposition still gets 60% of the time. They're 53% of the chamber but they get 60% of the time. We're 47% of the chamber and we get 40% of the time.
There's still a spirit of compromise on our part. Mr. Regan told me in private earlier that he felt it was the opposition's obligation to hold the government to account, and they needed the time to do that. Well, this proposal gives them the time to do that. They still get 60% of the time.
In terms of the numbers, in the last Parliament the Liberals had four. Now they have three. But they still want to keep the same number of speaking slots, effectively giving themselves preferential treatment. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised at that, but let's hope we can move beyond that. We've gained a number, yet we're losing a spot to speak, under this scenario. That doesn't make sense either.
The proposal of 41 minutes for the opposition, so 60% of the time, versus 27 minutes for the government, or 40% of the time, I think is a compromise that, frankly, even Mr. Siksay thought was reasonable until other considerations came to mind. I'm hoping we can come back to that and resolve this and move on to the other business the committee has to address.