Great. Thanks, Chair. That's usually a little longer than the House, because the House normally adjourns around 6:30 or so and they stay an hour after.
But here's the dilemma, Chair: not everybody is done with their work at this place at 9 o'clock. I've often been here, as I'm sure every single member has—I see some members nodding their heads—well past 9 o'clock. Now, what if, instead of having a temporary mini-crisis and short-term disability over my leg and my sciatica, I had a permanent minor disability that made walking long distances incredibly difficult, let alone in the weather and snow and the ice? Our folks are really good at keeping it as clear as they can, but when you get those storms around here, it doesn't take too long.
More important than me and my woes, what about the staff? As long as there's one member here working well past the buses, there's some staffer in this building supporting them who has that problem, whether it's Tyler cleaning up last-minute stuff, making sure that I'm ready to go again the next morning full tilt, or whether it's our bus drivers who are here and our other support staff and our security people. What about them? Those parking lots are an awfully long way. I really wonder, how do those who have any kind of disability—and it doesn't take much, given the long distances and the weather—do that? We still don't have it right.
There was a non-partisan sense of, look, we're all members of Parliament. We all come from our respective ridings. We all got here the same way. Our purpose is, in macro, the same—to make Canada as strong as it can be and better than when we got here. In general terms, regardless of what party you belong to, that's why we're here.
These issues came up from that kind of human element, and not one that I expect the public to care much about. It's just like when you think about world famous people, you don't think about them as people, with the regular challenges we all have and the aches and pains and the problems at home, all that stuff. You don't normally do that.
I'm not seeking any sympathy for that. We all worked awfully hard to get here. You take the little bit of bad that comes with the good that comes from being a member of the Canadian Parliament.
These were issues that we all cared about as people. It didn't matter; whether we were looking at each other as humans, as fellow citizens, as fellow workers here, or whether we were looking at the staff who support the work that we do, we knew that this place was not making people's lives as good as it could. In fact, it was hurting people's lives.
There was that general desire to make things better for everybody who works here, and the government had decided that this was a priority for them as well. There were those two interests. Does it start to sound familiar? Standing orders, election laws: we have these common interests, and how you approach it makes a difference. Does it start to found familiar?
So we approach this before the House leader even—