Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate that you've given just about everybody a chance to speak this morning for the first time to give their opinions on where we're at and where we're going. I'm not sure if we yet know where we're at or where we're going, but at least we know you've given everybody a chance to ventilate. I certainly would like to know where we're going and where we're at.
You made a suggestion that because your ruling was unfair in a lot of people's eyes, about relegating the government to third status on this committee when it comes to pecking order of who gets to speak first—I think even you would recognize that's not fair—you want to resolve this in another forum and another session, privately or publicly, whatever makes sense. Where are we going with that? Are we going to come to a conclusion?
Right now we're in a situation where, in this meeting and the previous meeting, you have taken it upon yourself to unilaterally make a decision that the government would be relegated to third status when it comes to pecking order. This is the second time you've done that. I do recall, last time you did that, you said something to the effect that this time you were doing it but there was a chance that next time you'd allow the government to go first, since you were allowing the opposition to go first this time. I think you might have even brought in the option of alternating back and forth last time. I do understand your dilemma about which opposition party goes first, because then if it goes opposition, government, then the third party wouldn't have its chance. Another option to that would be to alternate amongst the opposition parties and then government goes second.
So there are lots of possible permutations as to how we could resolve this as a committee. We have to resolve it, because the current situation is unacceptable. It's unacceptable to the government. You have even said you recognize it's not necessarily fair, as it stands, to do this every time. You did it once, last time, recognizing it wasn't really fair. As my colleague brought up, you recognized the third party even though it didn't even attempt to be recognized. I think that is also kind of a strange and bizarre thing for a chair to do, to recognize a party even though it didn't even attempt to be recognized.
Nevertheless, we've got a problem, and it has to be solved. The current status quo, which you created, is not acceptable, so let's find a solution. Let's set up another meeting so we can discuss this and come to a resolution. As it stands right now, we're sort of in never-never land, and we can't stay in never-never land forever.