That is exactly what led me to give the original interview opposing Fridays off, because I understood that there would not be any change in the number of break weeks. I think if you look at some of the newspaper coverage, the editorials, they've generally been opposed to taking Fridays off because it's seen as less work, even though the hours are the same.
If that were the case, then I would certainly be opposed to that because I don't think it's the right approach. Even if you have the same number of hours and even if you make some technical tricks to call a certain day two days in order to get your notice for motions, I think people would see that as a kind of gimmick, and a day is a day. I don't think you can fool people on that and I don't think it would help the image of Parliament to go to a four-day week and keep all of the break weeks.
I'd just like to make a couple of other smaller points. I found myself agreeing with what Sheila Copps said to you last week, I think it was, that Parliament is a relatively family-friendly place if you compare it to working in a steel mill in Hamilton. I think this is something to be kept in mind, that you may not want to go too far in pushing this. You have a lot of freedom. If pairing comes back, and you have a family birthday on a Wednesday or a Thursday and you want to be at that birthday or graduation, and there's a vote that day, you can arrange with the whip to be paired. I think this goes a long way to solving some of the problems of people with families.
About the commuting, I really don't have an answer to solve that. It's something everybody knows before they go into it. I think the calendar, being six months on and six months off, encourages members to keep their families in the ridings. This is a very personal decision, and I wouldn't presume to tell anybody what's right or wrong on that, but I think if it were the other way, you might have more members bringing their families to Ottawa, and it would be interesting to perhaps look at some studies that were done earlier and see how many did bring families to Ottawa compared to now. That's just an impression that I have.