I know you weren't doing any harm given my current obvious strategy. If you want to take up some more time, Tom, I'll let you speak away. That way I can have a sip of my coffee and still achieve my goal.
I can't remember where I was. I might have to repeat some of it to get back up to speed, but I'm sure the chair will assist me in making sure I don't fall back. He's paying attention. He always does. He's a very respectful chair. That's why he won unanimously. I remind my House leader sitting beside me that the chair won unanimously. There wasn't even another campaign sign on the table except his. It shows that we keep good leadership. Good leadership is what Canadians expect from this committee, and if I may, Chair, it's what Parliament expects from this committee.
This is a grown-up committee. This is the committee where people are supposed to set aside the pettiness, and if there's politics, at least it's the cutting-edge of politics. It's the hard hit of politics. It's not games, not fooling around, and yet, that's where we find ourselves right now.
We are facing a motion from a very respected member of Parliament, one of the most senior members of Parliament, and I invite anyone who has been listening to review how we approach this. We didn't come into this room and say, “We're loaded for bear, and whatever the government wants to do, we're going after them, no matter what.” That wasn't our approach. We all thought it would be a one-hour meeting to do some routine business and make sure everything is cool. We'd set up the business for the next meeting and then we'd be gone, away we go, no problem. We might have a little debate now and then on a couple of minor things, Chair, but certainly nothing that would sidetrack us or prevent us from achieving the goal of the committee which was to try to be wrapped up 10 minutes ago.
That's not the way it unfolded at all, Chair. Apparently, it's going to be the opposite kind of session to what we were hoping.
The government wanted to change the channel from talking about the Senate and some other issues that are driving them crazy. We'd like to turn the channel too and get on to doing some actual positive parliamentary business, and we'll have the fights and we'll do the political thing and all that, but at least everything is moving forward in a respectful way.
This is Canada. We respect each other. We're not getting any respect from the government on this. There's no respect shown to another parliamentarian when a motion is brought in by a majority government member at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to change the way we make laws in our country and not even allow a two-day tabling so the clerk can answer the primary questions that the official opposition and other opposition members have.
There's no respect in that. In fact, there's no respect for Parliament. There's no respect for Canadians.
The government is actually looking right now.... People need to understand that the government has brought in a motion that would change the process of making laws in a G-7 country and they won't even allow a two-day delay to allow the clerk of the committee to ask critically important questions about the ramifications, implications, and perhaps unexpected consequences of passing the motion. When the government won't even allow that, Chair, then it tells us that their interest in respecting other members' opinions, let alone good law-making, is not there.
That's not great for us. We're all busy. We had strategies too. You had strategies. We had strategies. This is not what we wanted. We had planned afternoons, too, just like everybody else, both individually and as a caucus. We had things that were in the pipe. This was not our objective. Our objective was to do exactly what we set out today. That worked for us in terms of our plans for today, but instead, everything is being derailed. All of the work of Parliament is seizing because we can't get to the business motions that Canadians, and certainly our colleagues, expected us to.
Every member of Parliament, Chair, is ready to get to work. They're ready to go to their committees, but nothing can happen until this committee does its work. We can't get to that because the government has brought in this motion and is giving no indication at all that they're prepared to be reasonable, fair-minded, or even intelligent, I would say, in passing motions. I didn't see any government members, Chair, when the clerk couldn't answer.... Given that it was the government members who brought this forward, we can only assume, given that they are lock-step when they vote and they're lock-step when they say nothing, that this is a government motion. This is as much from the PMO as it is from Mr. Reid.
Right now all of the business of Parliament is being frozen. All we're asking for is the ability to get information from the clerk. Did any of the government members jump in and say, “I can provide answers to Mr. Julian on that, Mr. Chair, if you allow me the opportunity. I've done some research. I have some documents I can give you. I can give you some of my thinking.” Even the mover of the motion isn't providing any of this information.