With John's permission, this is a really important point, and I thought that you said we have to look at different perspectives.
I know members have seen the paper that I presented to the government House leader and shared. There are other considerations, too, in terms of our schedule.
We have the ability, through technology, to fly home every weekend to do constituency work. We are working in our constituencies. The Liberal proposal for four days in Parliament is not to suggest that parliamentarians only work four days a week, but it does look like that to the public, perhaps.
The impact of working four or four and a half days in Parliament and having the technological ability to reach even the most far-flung riding, which in this case is that of our Chair.... I think the Yukon is the longest travel distance for any MP from Ottawa, but there are others that are also difficult. Certainly Nathan Cullen in Skeena—Bulkley Valley has quite a hike, and the riding is huge.
My point is that because of technology we've fallen into a habit of a parliamentary schedule that involves a lot of expense for the public purse, and I would love to see a calculation of what the Government of Canada writes in cheques to Air Canada and WestJet every year. Because we can fly, we do. We have to, because our constituents expect us to.
Also, wrapped up in that is a lens that we should apply. I'm sure the Minister of Environment and Climate Change would like to see us apply the lens to our parliamentary calendar of what the carbon footprint is of flying home every weekend. Many of us of course have small children at home, and it's our only chance to see them.
There's not going to be a perfect answer for everyone, but in the discussion that I hope we will eventually have about how we come to a consensus around the best schedule for parliamentarians, we should take into account what it costs in terms of public spending for all those flights and what it costs in greenhouse gases for all those flights.
I will also say—and I hope you'll forgive me for this, Mr. Chair—I agree with the point that was made earlier by Todd Doherty; we're not looking at changing the rules for our own convenience. However, there certainly is a physical toll, with an eight-hour transit in one direction, an eight-hour transit back, and a three-hour time-zone difference, on the way we work from a Sunday to a Monday and then from a Friday to a Saturday.
For the first time in the history of this place, I would like us to look at how technology has...without any real forethought or analysis of the costs, and to look at the financial and ecological costs of flying home every weekend, to see if we can find a family-friendly approach, what I'm calling the Fort McMurray work schedule.
I'm from Cape Breton. I have a lot of family friends who have gone through the experience, which is tough on families, of flying into Fort McMurray, doing a three-week stint, and then—usually the dad—flying home to Newfoundland or Cape Breton for three weeks at home.
For us as parliamentarians, if we extended our work week to five-and-a-half days per week—so we would work Monday to Friday, and a half-day on Saturday—we would actually have a more usable Monday because we would be in Ottawa on the Sunday.
One of the reasons Monday is a hard day and nothing much happens before noon is that people from the Maritimes are still flying back on Monday morning and those of us from B.C. are often landing in Ottawa at 1:30 in the morning. This Sunday we experienced a flight delay, so we landed in Ottawa just before 3:00 a.m. It makes it harder to work effectively on Monday morning. I just want to throw that out there so that people are thinking about it.
Can we consider putting a climate lens to our parliamentary work schedule? Can we consider reducing costs to the public purse and still making it livable and bearable for those who have small kids? There's no perfect solution to our calendar.
Above us is a picture of the Fathers of Confederation, and by the way, the mothers of Confederation were out of the room making tea. However, in this painting of the gathering in Charlottetown, we can spot Sir John A. Macdonald, and we can spot the founders of this great country. They were not able to fly home on weekends—it's obvious—but the parliamentary schedule of that era was very different than it is now, without any deliberation about what worked best for Parliament.
We have a unique opportunity now in 2017, at our 150th, to figure out what parliamentary schedule works in light of the climate crisis, and in light of a technology that we don't have to be enslaved by. We should be able to say this is what is livable, and what's workable for all of us. I appreciate the latitude.
Just to remind you, it's in the Standing Orders proposal the Green Party has made. It would actually let us live longer as individual human beings whether we're parliamentarians or not. Our longevity matters to some of us, I think, our nearest and dearest more than anyone one watching on CPAC right now.
Certainly, the carbon footprint of this place is horrific. We could deal with it at this juncture.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.