Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
As Mr. Fragiskatos pointed out, I am an associate member of this committee but I only watch the committee proceedings from the outside. I don't get to see what is happening within the committee and to understand the intricate delicacies of all the motions and the various amendments to the motions, and then the various subamendments to the motions, and then, as Mr. Julian tried to do today, a subamendment to the subamendment.
As I get on the phone with my constituents about what happens in Ottawa, I had a very interesting call with a young lady who had been following what's been happening with this specific topic over the past number of months. She asked me to explain to her what is going on. She asked what exactly is the objective of doing all this? What are we trying to prove here? Is this going to better our government services in any way? How is this going to impact me personally?
I listened to her and her frustrations, and initially I started to try to explain exactly what was going on. I think we both got lost in all the proceedings, etc., and then she told me to stop. She asked if I could tell her one thing that was going to help her as my constituent out of all these documents that were being put forward, all this questioning of the integrity of the public service or the integrity of x, y or z people among those whom we elected to serve us. I thought about it for a minute and I said I really couldn't point to a single thing that would impact the challenges she was having at this time with affordability, housing, finding affordable child care, worrying about her kids and their safety in their school—how that's going to go—and her job.
As I sat here today, watched the discussions with intrigue and saw the subamendments being proposed here in front of me, I tried to get a grasp of this myself. I think my two cents to this debate would be to help us understand and to add that extra value of why we're sitting in these seats in the first place, why we are working long hours, why we travel all across the country or halfway across the country, whether it's virtually or in person, to sit in the House and to debate a lot of these important issues.
Really why we do all of that is to serve Canadians, to ensure that the time we're spending in these debates is of value to individual Canadians and to young families who are trying to thrive and strive in this very serious pandemic, and to make sure that the health and well-being of Canadians is well taken care of. I think that's our obligation as members of Parliament, regardless of what side of the aisle we sit on.
I know for a fact how hard each one of us works. I sat on committee with Mr. Falk in the last Parliament. We were on the justice committee together and we had such a wonderful relationship with respect to the work we were doing in that committee, again serving Canadians.
We've travelled together—