Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to reply to a few things that were said on this issue by the opposition.
Upon reflection, I can understand that perhaps--and I'll take the responsibility--I was remiss in not having a conversation with the other whips. We did meet on a number of other issues between the 19th.... As I've always been quick to point out, the four whips meet whenever we need to, sometimes more than once a day. If I was remiss in not passing on to them that I sensed the logical time for the staff to meet to discuss these provisional standing orders would be the break week, as per the motion that was adopted on September 20, then I accept responsibility for not communicating that. If that had headed off all this, then I guess that's my responsibility. I should have done that. I just thought it was logical. Things are pretty hectic when this place is sitting, not only for ourselves, but for our long-suffering and overworked office staff. It just made eminent sense to me that the staff would get together.
There was one discussion between an NDP staffer and David Preston in the government House leader's office about when this meeting was going to happen. And I don't think it was motivated by paranoia at that point. It was just a legitimate concern and a scheduling issue: When can we know this meeting is going to happen so we can all try to adjust our agendas and our schedules so we can be present to discuss this? As I said, in light of all the conversations we've had, if somehow I was neglectful in not communicating, I take responsibility.
I was going to comment on Mr. Owen's intervention when he said he's not been persuaded there was any bad faith. I understand it would be very difficult for him to be convinced of that one way or the other, because, as he pointed out quite correctly--and this is part of the difficulty of this issue--not all of us were present at the House leaders and whips' meeting where this agreement was made. Certainly he's at a disadvantage in this discussion because of that. It would be extremely difficult to convince him there was bad faith.
As for the comment by my colleague, Monsieur Guimond, about consistency, ideally we would always be consistent in everything we've done as politicians and as political parties. That doesn't happen even for opposition parties, even for the Bloc Québécois and the NDP, and I could point that out with some very quick research. Positions evolve, personal positions where we're persuaded to amend our position by force of argument in healthy and sometimes very heated debate. That's part of the whole point of debate. So there isn't always consistency in the positions we take, either as individual MPs or as political parties.
I would suggest to Monsieur Guimond that we're struggling with a reality right now that the Liberals struggle with from time to time when they move back and forth from opposition to government. That reality is that things do change, for a political party and for a caucus of members of Parliament, when you're faced with trying to put forward an agenda, especially in a minority government, when you're faced with the challenges of trying to keep the commitments to the Canadian people that you made in the last election campaign. We are presented with challenges, and sometimes those challenges affect the consistency of the positions we've taken in the past, even the consistency on specific rules of engagement, if I can call them that, in Parliament. That's a reality, and it's a reality that, I think we would all admit, the Bloc Québécois and the NDP will never have to face.
