Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the many speeches made by government members and they seem to want to lead us to believe that there is a sense of urgency and that we must act quickly. They are trying to get their point across by taking every opportunity to remind us that negotiations have been underway for eight months. It seems to me that one does not have to have participated in very many negotiation processes to know that things move slowly for the first few months. The parties talk about the colour of the paper, the expiry date of the collective agreement, the number of years.
The collective agreement expired at the end of January 2011. The parties have therefore really only been negotiating for a few months. If the parties are negotiating without any strike action, what difference does it make if it takes 8, 12 or 24 months, as long as services are still being provided and the public is not negatively affected. In my opinion, the sense of urgency seems to have been created entirely by the lockout declared by Canada Post and likely telegraphed by our government friends.