No, no, I think you have heard my arguments. I just wanted to add a few comments.
Your problem is that you do not want to see another situation like the one we had with the Nisga'a agreement. It was about an agreement with a First Nation in the west. At the time, the Reform Party introduced 471 amendments in the House. It all started on a Monday morning and ended on the Wednesday morning. Each Reform member of Parliament stood up, one by one, very slowly, day and night. That was the party whose members discovered the trick and started to use it in the House. It was so slow that Jason Kenney took a nap in the House. He had one of those little pillows you use on flights. By taking a nap, he made the front page of the Globe and Mail . Perhaps you do not want to see that kind of thing happen again.
The problem with independent members attending committee meetings is that they are not committee members. The committee's role is to study bills, to propose amendments and to submit everything to the House. An independent member could decide to block the work of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, for example. The way of doing that in committees is not the same as in the House. We voted 471 times on the Reform Party amendments. People had T-shirts saying that they had voted no 471 times on the Reform Party amendments. It took three days, around the clock.
What would happen if an independent member introduced 700 amendments at the committee and we had to devote our two weekly two-hour meetings to them? The committee would be paralyzed. I feel that you would regret making this decision.
This kind of thing happens in the House, but not every day. But if an independent member started taking part in all the committees and bringing forward 500 amendments each time a bill was up for consideration, it would open the door to a situation you can hardly imagine. Excuse me, but, with all due respect, I think you are going to be opening a real Pandora's box without even realizing it.
Personally, if I was an independent member, I would assign my staff to this full-time and it would really exasperate you. You would be sorry for allowing me to attend committee meetings and to make amendments there and not in the House.
Then one of you might well have the gall to get up and propose going in camera. So then we would sit in camera for six months to hear amendments from an independent member of Parliament who had come to sit on the committee and paralyze its work.
We say that we are masters of our own actions, but the real ones are those who are going to paralyze parliamentary committees. I do not know if this has been well thought out. Sometimes pressure can be exerted in the House, as the Reform Party did, but it does not happen every day. I get the impression that the Conservatives have started being Reformers again after their convention. It looks like Reform ideas are coming back. You are really throwing the door wide open.
Independent members of Parliament, who are not part of any political party and who answer to no political party, could come here and propose not just 500 amendments—that figure I gave was very generous—but 1000 amendments. We would not know what to do in a situation like that. We would have to vote on one amendment at a time. There would be no end to the voting.
Mr. Chair, maybe you have a good idea. Maybe you are going to cut off my right to speak.