Mr. Speaker, they never happen. We will see whether the government supports this tomorrow.
The government has been giving an excuse that the reason we cannot do this is only the Prime Minister could strike a regional and gender balance in choices for committee chairs. This is a Prime Minister who has picked 59 out of 69 male committee chairs and has had two-thirds of committee chairs coming from a single province and in some cases provinces have not had committee chairs in the past nine years.
Does the government really believe that members of the House could possibly do a worse job of striking regional and gender balance by voting for committee chairs by secret ballot?