Mr. Chairman, I cannot specifically refer to the report of the House leader, but I think there is some element of good will on the part of the House leader to respond to some of those issues.
I will suggest in defence of the House leader that there has been more than incremental progress since January until now, frankly under the chairmanship of you, Mr. Chairman. One area was in terms of getting electronic voting. Our caucuses voted on that issue and I think it will move forward. It is pretty significant reform.
On the issue of first reading, I think we will see more and more bills leave the House earlier and get into committee for longer periods of time, with which I think all of us would agree.
On increases to the budget of the Library of Parliament, $1 million has been put toward that. Any time there is more money in the Library of Parliament, it gives all of us an opportunity to be better prepared.
Meetings such as this, committees of the whole, I think give more opportunities for, how shall I say it, less partisan interaction. I have to commend the House leader for that kind of initiative.
One of the things that has been discussed is more opportunity for first time members to meet the candidates for Speaker and to give speeches on those candidates so that people who are in this House for the first time get to know the people who are offering themselves as candidates.
I understand that for things like closure debates, et cetera, there may be time issues that are coming up. As well, I believe concurrence issues are being discussed, with a reduction of the time that the government has to respond to parliamentary reports.
On one level I could argue this is happening at just a snail's pace. On the other hand I might also argue that from January to now, the House leader, with the co-operation of the committee chaired by the Chairman here, has made significant progress. Regrettably all votes are equal on the committee and frankly he can only make as much progress in this Chamber as he is able to make in the committee with all five members.
Again, at this point I am not prepared to be overly critical of our House leader. I think we all have our shopping lists, our wish lists. He was good enough to publish his in 1992.