Thank you, Chair.
Thanks very much for being present. I indicated earlier that I was going to focus on one area. I will acknowledge right up front that part of it is a pet peeve in terms of my experience here on the Hill, but it does lead to what I think are matters that are far more substantive than my feet getting cold.
It's about what we call the “green bus service”. Now even that's changing. It's no longer going to be the green bus, I guess; it's going to be the white bus. Anyway, there have been cutbacks. I've been around here going on 12 years now, and it has been cutback, cutback, and cutback. That's not to say that there aren't times when you can make changes and improvements and when cuts are even warranted, but my experience is that with the expansion of Parliament Hill now spilling over more onto Queen Street and Wellington Street, and with the opening in the last few years of what is now the Valour Building, we're actually going off the Hill.
There was a time—and you can tell I'm getting old—back in the good old days.... But there was a time not that long ago when you got on the green bus and it came very quickly and very efficiently. One bus took you everywhere, because there were only a handful of locations. It's very different now. It's far more widespread. At a time when we have more destinations, the vehicles now have to leave the Parliament Hill precinct and go onto the public streets of Ottawa, particularly along Wellington and Queen, and get all the way around the national monument to get over to One Wellington. At a time when we have an expanded need for the service, there have been more and more cutbacks. Now, I'm not saying that there hasn't been some expansion, but relatively speaking, in my view, there's been a diminishment of the service.
I'll just get this off my chest and then I'll move to what is the more substantive matter. From my perspective, the amount of efficiency and productivity lost by the number of times people have to wait for a bus, and by how many times committee meetings have been delayed, or by staff people having to use them to get around when they're bringing things for the members because something has changed, or the agenda has changed, or you need information.... On the efficiency waste, if you had experts look at it, I have to believe—and I'm no expert—that they would tell you that this is a false economy and that you may be saving on the one budgetary line item that says “transportation on the Hill”, but if you look at the effect on the efficiency and productivity, not to mention just the frustration level....
I'll get to the point: it's cold in Ottawa. I'll say parenthetically to my new colleagues that I'm from Hamilton, and I knew it was cold when I got here and the people from Winnipeg said, “Aw, Dave, it's really cold here.”