Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes; I think the country would be better off, though, if you could reach a unanimous decision. I read the debate very carefully on the Layton motion on March 17. I read the government comments on it. I read them very carefully. I didn't see anything put forward by the government on what they thought the rule should be, other than possibly—they never stated it as crudely, or rudely, maybe, as I did, or as straightforwardly as I did—to have any requests for prorogation, of any length of time, no time limit at all, it doesn't matter.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Okay. I've got the right channel now.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm sorry, but what was your question?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm recommending that this committee and your House, of which you are a part, reach an agreement on how you're to be closed down. That's a crucial part of the life of any body, and I think you have to decide. The idea that you can be closed down anytime, for any length of time, for any reason, by the Prime Minister, even a Prime Minister who doesn't have a majority in your House, strikes me as making you very vulnerable, if I may say so, to being shut down in all kinds of situations.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I just wanted to make sure you saw its importance. It has served us well, too.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's right.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It would certainly be a change, Mr. Reid. We can change governments without an election--at least, most constitutional scholars have thought so--if, after an election, the incumbent government meets the House and wants to carry on but is quickly defeated and there's a clear alternative.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  So that's there now. What you do with a constructive vote of non-confidence is that you would all have to agree on it. And in doing it, you'd have to recognize that this is quite a big change. A constructive vote of non-confidence--again, a vote saying “We don't have any confidence in this government, but we do have confidence, and a majority of us would support, this party, with this leader, if they formed the government”--could come any time during a parliamentary session, as has happened in Germany, not just a few weeks or months after the election.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No, it's much, much more. The Statute of Westminster settled one, but only one, issue. It didn't even settle that fully. It settled that where United Kingdom laws and the laws of any of the now independent, autonomous nation-states of the Commonwealth were in collision--let's say New Zealand had a law on trust that was different from the U.K. law on trust--the New Zealand law, or any of the Commonwealth domestic laws, would prevail, with one exception, and that was Canada.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Not if it weren't agreed to by one of the key players, which is the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister's party colleagues.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm going very much by the Supreme Court, which said the key actors must feel bound by the rule.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In my judgment, no, not if the Prime Minister and the particularly important party he leads have opposed it.