There are lots of ways to get there. That's the problem, Chair. There are other ways of getting to places than the government just using its majority, the tyranny of the majority.
That's what they're doing now. Here's the trick. They're going to probably play some kind of game that will get the committee to sit past one o'clock, and the whole idea is that I can only sit here for so long and then eventually I will have to physically collapse or give up, and at some point that does happen. I'm only human, and being elected isn't supposed to be a physical endurance test, but here we are. The government is going to use the tyranny of the majority to shut this down too. That's what's going on.
Chair, I believe, since there's about to be an attempt to push me off the floor, that I should be given the latitude to explain why it was necessary for us to bring this motion. It is not obstructionist and it's not meant to delay things, at least it's not meant to delay for the sake of delaying. It's meant to delay for the purpose of giving Canadians a chance to see what's going on.
We have also shut down all the travel of the committee. We're using the tools that we have. This is important, and the government is not giving one inch.
I've said they don't care. They've done the political calculation. They will take the hit. They'll take whatever headline might come out of their using their majority today or tomorrow, whenever they use it. They'll take that hit because they're betting—and, unfortunately, it's probably a pretty good bet—that by Labour Day no one will be thinking about election laws because it will all be over before the summer. Then it won't be mentioned again in any meaningful way until after the next election, and by that time all the changes that the Conservatives want that give them advantages in the next election will have been allowed to do their job.
Chair, you know the respect I have for you, and I accept that, at the end of the day, I can only maintain this battle for so long, but until such time as I can't, I am going to battle because this is wrong, and it's wrong because I can point you to a process that we already used—you, me, Mr. Lukiwski, Mr. Reid, and others—that was fair. Never once through that whole process did I or anybody else say, “This is unfair”.
Why did we have that fairness, by the way? Was it the generosity of the government of the day? No. It was because we had minority, and the government didn't have a majority at their disposal to tyrannize with—is that the word? I'm not sure it is...