Mr. Speaker, it has been an interesting process we have witnessed over the last couple of years. We have gone from having a minority Conservative government to a totally different attitude on how to govern proceedings inside the House now that the Conservatives have a majority. Democracy has really fallen to the side. It is not as important as it used to be when the Conservative/Reformers had a minority government.
I want to raise a specific issue. It was during the 39th Parliament that the previous clerk of the House of Commons told the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs that the budget for Parliament can handle two weeks of extended sitting hours in June. However, if the extended hours were to continue for additional weeks, the government would likely have to seek Parliament's approval for more money.
I notice that the supplementary estimates (A) do not include a request to make any of the payments that will be generated by things such as overtime for House of Commons staff. I would argue that the government House leader seems to be responding to a Conservative crisis from last week and is getting anxious to leave a little early as opposed to going through the normal process. If the government had a plan to sit extra hours, there should have been a budget request going into the estimates to increase the budget, which would allow us to sit the extra weeks.
My question to the opposition House leader is whether he would concur that this might have been done in a very hasty fashion, possibly as a way to deal with the crisis that is looming with respect to the Senate.