Mr. Speaker, I did not hear any comment on the substance of the motion. The hon. minister did not tell us if he thinks it would be an improvement not to have whips' lists and to allow MPs to have the guarantee that they will have their 60 seconds, one after the other, in alphabetical order.
He addressed three items, and I will comment very quickly.
The first one is that we should not affect the power of the Speaker. Obviously we should not and we will not.
He said that the whips' lists do not bind the Speaker. Alphabetical order, by this motion, would not bind the Speaker. We cannot bind the Speaker. We cannot remove the power of the Speaker. We may indicate to the Speaker how the members of the House would like the Speaker to proceed. If my colleague thinks it is not clear enough, he would just have to propose amendments, and we would consider them with openness. We should not be partisan; the cheap partisan jabs in this case are very imprecise and ineffective.
Second, he asked why we should not do it for question period as well. The motion is about statements by members; we will deal with question period another time. It is a step-by-step issue that we need to focus on, and just because we are not able to do everything at the same time does not mean that we should do nothing.
Third, the member asked why the Liberals are not doing it alone. It is because we want to have the same strategy as our friends. If they have a strategy to attack us, we need to be prepared to react. If we have our strategy to offer more leeway to MPs from all parties, we are ready to do it.