Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would just weigh in to say that I appreciate folks sounding off about the filibuster and the nature of it. As I say, during that process, I commented on what I thought about the objectives of the filibuster and in fact agreed with some of them.
That's not what this is about. What this is about is the role of vice-chair on committee and the fact that we went through a long process, and the person who is paid $6,600 every year to be here to relieve the chair—and I think also performs some other important informal duties—left it to somebody else to do those informal duties and wasn't present during those proceedings. That's really what is at issue. I shared some information about that.
I do think that, when we talk about larger context, we have an official opposition right now whose leader has held a number of press conferences to say that he wants to make how much MPs show up to work an issue, that he wants Parliament to sit through the summer and that he wants committees to sit through the summer, yet his right-hand man on the finance committee isn't showing up in the regular season. It's the leader of the official opposition who has made this such a relevant issue by insisting on the idea that MPs, instead of doing the work that we all have to do during the summer in our ridings, should be showing up here in Ottawa to do more kinds of work here, although we've seen that sometimes that work can end up actually just meaning listening to Conservatives sound off.
If the relevant political issue of the day, as per the leader of the official opposition, is MPs showing up to work, and we just went through an over 40-hour study of the budget implementation act, where his main person on the file, despite having a paid obligation to the committee, wasn't coming, how serious should we really take those things? I'm hearing from the committee that there's a lot of goodwill around the table and a willingness to put this debate aside, I think, but I want Conservatives to know that, if they want to continue to make issues like this an issue, a number of us are going to have a lot to say and they're not going to like everything that they have to hear, or, rather, they're not going to like to hear everything that I have to say, certainly, and that others may.
There are different ways of going about our business here, but if the Conservatives want to have their cake and eat it too—to accuse folks of not showing up to work while they themselves are not doing that and accepting a paycheque for it—then we're going to have words about it. If we want to conduct our business otherwise, in a more understanding way, with parties trying to figure that out and not playing the politics of calling out, so be it, but I'm tired of being the reasonable person in the room and having that be taken advantage of for people to try to score political points against me as I watch them do the very thing that they themselves criticize.
I'm not prepared to tolerate that kind of hypocrisy anymore. That's a warning for folks who want to continue to carry on in that way themselves: If we want to have a race to the bottom, we will get there. That's not the way I prefer to do politics. I think I've demonstrated that many times around this table, but I think that if that's the way it's going to go, then that's where I'll end up along with everybody else.
Why don't we find a different way of doing things? In order to do that, we need some leadership, and that should come from the people who are paid to do that job of leadership on this committee.
Thank you.