The guiding principle behind our proposal has always been fairness and respect for all of the parties and all of the members here.
I want to respond to what Mr. Bélanger said. At no time in our discussions did we decide that we were going to cut the Liberal Party out of any round. Our strategy was simply based on the fact that there are 11 members here, and every single one of those members should have an opportunity to speak. If somebody is going to be cut off because of lack of time, it will be the governing party and the opposition party, and not the third party, which has one chance to speak because they have only one member here. That was the guiding principle behind our discussions. Everybody speaks, all 11 people.
To be fair to Mr. Bélanger, since he's the only one here representing his own party, he speaks in the first round, which gives him an opportunity over a lot of the members who only get to speak for five minutes instead of seven. There was never any discussion about winning this point or losing this point. We just said we'd sit down and give everybody a chance to speak, and then we'll start over again.
I reject, Mr. Chair, any suggestion that we don't want to come to a solution or that there's an impasse or that we don't want to compromise. We are compromising. We feel that it's standard, if you will. It's common sense. It's common sense to allow everybody to speak and to allow everybody to speak once in the first two rounds, and then we repeat those rounds all over again.
We're starting, in keeping with tradition, with the opposition party asking the first question. I don't see why it has now become a question of who finishes one round and who starts the other round and that kind of stuff. We have to bear in mind what happens at the end. There's a reality here, and we can't hide that.
I listened very carefully to what Mr. Harris had to say: if it goes to four rounds, two of us get cut out. We're accepting up front that if it goes to the last three speakers, two of us are going to be cut out, not one of you. If you want to go four, five, or six, that kind of logic doesn't make sense. If we have no rounds, nobody speaks.
I think it's a good compromise. It's on the table. Everybody speaks. Everybody has an opportunity to say what they want. If we don't have enough time, we get cut off at the end more than anybody else. I don't see why you're positioning this as us being stringent. As Mr. Harris said at one point, we represent 60% of the population on this side, and you represent 40% on that side. There are two parties on that side. There's no coalition here. We haven't mentioned that word. Mr. Harris can't speak to 60%. He doesn't represent 60%.
There are 11 members here. To give everybody an equal chance to speak is fair. It's equitable. It's balanced. We can try to present and twist and turn and look at this thing left, right, and centre, Mr. Chair, and I have no problem if you call a meeting every single day from now until Christmas to resolve this thing. We're not going to be budging on a question of very strong principle, which is that we allow every member here an opportunity to speak once before we start again with the second round.
To allow somebody to speak more than once is not fair to anybody else. It's not fair to any parties. It's not fair to the parliamentary system. It's not fair to the standard business practices that I think a committee like this should employ to guide it every day and in every session we have.