Merci, Madame le présidente.
Thank you for not monopolizing the discussion. You've asked a few of my questions.
First of all, Madam Chair, through you to Mr. Gordon, I'd like to say about the threat of voting one way or the other, we're not in the forties, and your representative in Sudbury, the guy with the baseball cap, threatened me the first year I was elected. He's gone, and I'm still there, so that's nonsense. Don't threaten with me with “I'll vote for you or I won't”. I know damned well you don't vote for me, and you won't. Your members do, though.
I take offence to that one. You take people who have the duties that we have, the responsibilities that we have, and suggest that we can be bought with a vote.
I want to know if there's a problem. I want to know if the people who called us are not getting paid for three months. That's all I care about. The system is so screwed up I wouldn't understand it anyway. We've had your managers here. One department didn't know what the other department was doing. They couldn't answer our questions. I don't have the energy or the lifespan, enough years left, to fix the situation. I want to know if the young lady or the young man or the single mother working for the Government of Canada has to wait three months to get paid. That's all I want to know. Once I know that's happening, all I want to know is damn it, did you pay them? Are you caught up? That's all I want to know. All the rest....
Please tell me that's what you're going to talk about and I'll go to my office until we vote on something. I wasted time here on Tuesday. It's not what we want to study. Am I correct?