It was Tip O'Neill, absolutely.
All politics is local, so if I were these government backbenchers—on this committee in particular, but even as a backbencher in general—in terms of my own re-election, I would be paying great attention to how much traction the label “anti-democratic” has and is sticking.
We do know from certain little birdies that there were some interesting discussions at the Liberal retreat last weekend about this matter. It would seem, from some little birdies' reports, that some of you are getting the message that this could be a problem, that it is not something you're going to counter-spin with a ten percenter, and that the longer this goes on, as my friend Jack Layton would say, the more this circles the stain. The stain is the betrayal in regard to changing first past the post. It was an outright, flat out—there's no other interpretation—betrayal. Then, on a related file, this government decided to get even more anti-democratic than breaking their campaign promise to the very people who elected them.
It would seem that some of the brighter lights over there, according to birdie reports, reflected their concerns at the caucus meeting. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though anyone was listening. No one is listening. They're just leaving you out here, stranded in this lifeboat. You just float along, getting pushed by the waves of arguments—justifiable arguments—coming from the opposition benches. Boy, if ever there were a time to be on the transportation committee, the health committee, or the public accounts committee—anything other than PROC—this would be it. Maybe it wasn't such a gift, my friends, I'll just leave it at that, and it's getting worse every day.
I know that I'm starting to grate on some of you. That's fair, but the really bad news, well, the good news, is that eventually I do stop. That does happen.