Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is approaching the question from the wrong end of the horse.
The usual motion that we see after a prorogation is a motion that seeks to allow the government to introduce bills in the next period of time, typically 30 days. They would be restored at the stage they were at. That was the starting point of our preparation of a motion. That is the usual practice, but we thought that this time we should perhaps go farther than that.
We thought there were things we would ask for as government initiatives, but there were a whole series of things being done in Parliament that mattered, some of which were agreed on very late in the last Parliament. There were a whole series of things that went beyond just government legislation. Rather than having the usual motion that dealt only with restoring government bills, we wanted to be fair to everybody and have everybody's interests reflected. We wanted to go beyond the usual motion that just deals with legislation to look at restoring some committee mandates as well, because we knew that some of them mattered a lot to opposition members.
An example was the committee mandate to deal with MP's expenses and the like. We had done something extraordinary there to allow for the participation of independents. We thought we should give them the right that was negotiated late in the last Parliament, which they asked for and received. We thought we should not just have the traditional motion that only deals with bills but that everybody's business should be put back where it was and treated in a fair and non-partisan fashion so that nobody would find themselves left behind. That was why.