Thank you very much for being here with us today. I have a few questions for you as well.
First of all, I want to say that I appreciated your remarks with regard to parental leave for parliamentarians. You raised a series of questions, and I think one of the things we always have to be conscious of when we're talking about these kinds of reforms is the impact they will have on constituents. Constituents vote for someone to be their representative, and they believe that that's the person who would best represent the constituency. For someone to take parental leave would leave those constituents without a representative.
I've appreciated some of those questions you asked. Who would represent the constituents? Would that absence end up changing the outcome of a vote? There's a whole series of other questions, and I think those are important. It is important we remember that we're here to serve our constituents. It's a crucial thing.
I want to follow up in a couple of areas. In the exchange you just had with members from the government, I think I was understanding where you were going, but when you made your reforms, you made the decision—I think, if I'm understanding correctly—to go with more sitting weeks, but shorter weeks in those sittings. It sounded like that was currently being looked at, or reviewed, or there had been some discussion about it at least.
Could you elaborate a bit on why? One of the challenges for us in Ottawa to look at something like that would be the significant cost, particularly for people coming in from the west. If you have more weeks, but shorter weeks, that would increase the travel costs to taxpayers. I'm wondering if that is part of the reason you're looking at it. I know that the context is a bit different at the provincial level, but I'm wondering if that's one of the reasons why this is currently being reviewed, or if there are other reasons, and if you could elaborate on them.