Nice. I appreciate that. Thank you for the support we received from all members of all parties. I appreciate it.
I want to intervene briefly as a New Democrat to say that we won't be supporting the subamendment because it is very similar to the amendment before. I know that you've ruled that it's different, which is fine with us, but at the same time it's consistent with the policies of delaying what needs to take place.
For some history here, it was the Harper administration that started bringing in ministers for one hour. That was not the case before. The tradition of the past has been that ministers come here for two hours.
I don't know why a minister wouldn't want to come for two hours, actually. My experience in this format has been that ministers, once they know their file, actually can exceed almost any opposition member's attempts to do certain things in many ways because they have the last word and the control of the mike. I don't know why the government would be hesitant with two hours.
However, I do understand where it comes from. In fact, there was a time when parliamentary secretaries weren't at committee. That was brought in by the Paul Martin administration. It was consistently handled...and continued all the way through the Harper administration to the one we have now.
As well, on riders.... I come from an area, as you know, Mr. Chair, close to the American border, so we call them riders to a bill. Those are things that are added into a bill. That was originally done, that I know of.... I know that in the history of Canada it's been done before. That was done through the Martin administration on a couple of issues, like immigration and so forth. Then it became a regular practice during the Harper administration. It became routine. In fact, many of those things that were added later on lost court cases. It became quite extreme. In fact, they used closure over 100 times in the House of Commons with one hour of debate.
For us, we want to see this get moving. I remember when the current Prime Minister supported the minority Harper administration over a hundred times without getting amendments to bills.
As New Democrats, we came here to make Parliament work. We want to see this get done, especially for dental care. My riding has some of the highest child poverty in Canada and some of the highest numbers of single mothers, as well. You may not think that Windsor, being right on the Detroit border, would have these types of consequences because of the type of wealth that we do sometimes have, but the reality is that we also have a significant issue over poverty. We're eager to see these results because we're also going to be moving into seniors and persons with disabilities.
One of the first motions I lost in the House of Commons back in 2002 was to create a bill that would actually have environmental contaminants and human health looked at. We have such a high rate of disabilities in my region because of the industrialization and the pollution. It's not only from our auto industry, which we have done ourselves, but also from the Ohio River valley, the toxic streams and rivers, and the Great Lakes, where we haven't treated it properly. There is a high rate of thyroid cancer. We actually outperform in the number of children born with disabilities and so forth.
We won't be supporting this. We hope the government finds two hours for the minister to come here. At the same time, I don't think the most important thing for Canadians is a few hours here at committee. I don't remember if, in any of the eight elections I've been in for.... I've done my filibuster at a couple of committees and I've seen this come and go at different times, but I don't remember many people raising that as a serious issue for them and their families at this point in time.
I'm hopeful that we'll get this going because there's a lot of work to get done. I do respect the fact that they want the minister here for two hours. I wish, though, that they wouldn't have brought this practice in because we probably wouldn't be here today at this debate if that were the case.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.