I would be more inclined to be persuaded by that, but I think the situation as it stands now still allows that question period. It still allows some private members' business to be conducted, which gives more people the opportunity to do their private members' business, but it also makes it easier for those who need to make a choice to get home for things if they have a long way to go.
I fly to Calgary. It's about a six-hour trip by the time you do the flight, with getting to the airport, and so on, and I'm close to the airport. I can think of colleagues who fly with me to Calgary and then wait a couple of hours and take another flight for a couple of hours, and then they drive six hours after that. They leave Ottawa on a Thursday night or a Friday morning, and it's Saturday before they get to their riding. Then they have to turn around less than 24 hours later and come back.
I think that gives the maximum flexibility for someone to be able to say, “Okay, I'll give someone else the opportunity for question period that day, and I don't have any need to be there for that particular private member's business.” That partial day allows them to have that flexibility.
The same thing goes for the people who have their families here. If they bring their families to Ottawa and we add more weeks, it makes it more of a challenge for them to make that decision.
I could go on and on about that. What we have now gives the most flexibility. I'm not saying we can't have a discussion about a change, but I just don't think that removing a question period every week is a starter for me, and it's the same for many of my colleagues in the opposition.
Can we have a conversation about whether that Friday is different, and those kinds of things? Yes, I think those are conversations we can have. I'd be happy to get to that discussion. However, it's easy to understand when we've seen these different attempts and different rationales provided for doing that, that it's one example where I think there's a lack of ability for the opposition to say they can feel comfortable with having that discussion when they feel as though something is going to be forced on them.
I don't know what the agenda is. Is it to get rid of the question period, or what is it? It seems as though there is one and we don't really seem to have been told what it is.