Mr. Speaker, I guess I and the hon. member will respectfully disagree because as I said earlier, I do not believe that the issue here, as the government would like it to be seen, is whether or not some agreement was broken. The issue here is whether or not the provisional Standing Orders should be made permanent.
Certainly there was discussion at the House leaders meeting about how to proceed on this matter. Certainly there was an understanding that we needed to have an extension, otherwise they would have run out much more rapidly. I do not remember the date, but the member says November 21. There is nothing to preclude discussions by staff, if that had happened, but it did not happen, or a committee legitimately taking up its business.
This is not really about agreements being broken. it is about the House doing its business. It was entirely appropriate that the procedure and House affairs committee should take this up if it so wanted, and that is what it is there to do, and bring it back to the House. That is exactly what happened.
I would suggest to the hon. member that we should focus on the real debate here in terms of the Standing Orders. If there are changes that the member wants to see, maybe we will hear that in his presentation in a little while, and it can go back to the committee for that kind of consideration. Clearly the issue here today is to vote on whether or not these provisional Standing Orders should be made permanent. We think they should be.
What is going on here is quite a big brouhaha that the government would like to make. Does the government think that other parties do not talk to each other? All kinds of discussions take place, at committee, at House leaders meetings. That is the nature of this place.
It is being dealt with in an open and transparent way at the committee and back here in the House. I fail to see what the complaint is.
Again, I would say let us focus on the debate here, which is saying to Canadians that we need to improve the way we do our business. We need to improve the way we conduct ourselves as members of Parliament. We still have a long way to go on that and that is what we would like to focus on.