Don't confuse me. It's easily done.
They would come by and have input. We believed that it was meaningful, like it mattered that we would take the time. We struggled. We don't just agree with everything automatically. Usually it takes some kind of change, but really, with such positive work and a good combination of veterans and new members, so that we had a good mix, we were doing good work. I think every one of us would say that we were doing good work on behalf of Parliament and on behalf of Canadians.
Then, when they dropped Bill C-33 on the floor of the House, it was as if it was all a ruse, just a joke, a make-work project to keep us busy, or it was pro forma.
I just went through 10 years of that, of a government that looked at committee work that way, and I was really looking forward to getting back to a world where committees mattered, to the important work that the mother of Parliaments perceived when this kind of Westminster parliamentary system was put in place. The whole idea was that the real work would happen at committee. That's why we're a little looser with the rules. That's why we can call each other by our names and not just our ridings.
That's why at committee you can speak until you're done, so that if we're going to talk about water quality and my riding represents a good part of the Hamilton Harbour waterfront, I'm going to have a lot to say about it, or I may have a lot to say. The one nice thing at committee is that once you take the floor, you can go until you're done. That doesn't mean that everything is a filibuster, but it means that if you want to take your time and spell out an issue that affects your constituents as it relates to the matter in front of you, if you're going to build that case, it's complex, and you want to break it down so it's understandable, that may take 20 or 30 minutes or maybe an hour, or maybe a little longer depending on the subject matter.
That's one of the beauties of committee, and we don't have that time in the House. Remember that we come here believing that our main priority objective is to reflect the wishes and interests of our constituents. Because there is so much going on in the House, we all accept that there are going to be time constraints, as difficult as that is.
If I may say so, though, Mr. Chair, at least in the House in the early part of a new bill or motion, you at least get 20 minutes plus 10 minutes of questions and answers with colleagues, for a total of 30 minutes that you have to deal with an issue that your constituents consider important. I want to point out that under one of the proposals the government would make, that would be eliminated. That whole idea dies here: at committee, you get 10 minutes at a time. It doesn't matter how complex the issue is. It doesn't matter how much you need to break a whole lot of.... Nothing matters except that time limit, and now it starts to become a very different creature.
I again want to express how disappointing it is at that level that we're here. I'm trying to be fair-minded, but on balance I couldn't even give the government a fifty-fifty to say that they've honoured 50% of the commitments they made to committees. They've made some. They did honour some, but I have to tell you that when the rubber hits the road, when real politics start to take over and we have real issues in front of us and the government is feeling the pressure, whether it's from entities or the clock, they're acting more and more like the previous Harper government in terms of their lack of—