I appreciate your consenting to my intervention.
I think you're aware that I spoke about this in the House. I listened to Mr. Doherty's point.
You've mentioned in the House of Commons that you're a workaholic, and I can appreciate that. To be honest, I think most MPs are working extremely hard. Even though I'd spent my whole life in the background in politics, I didn't really appreciate the amount of commitment and work that MPs put in.
I think that's exactly why we need the discussion. Coming from someone new to politics in terms of being an MP, and seeing how hard we work, there are clear things, in my mind, that we can do better. That's why we need the discussion.
The example I gave in the House of Commons is the committee work. We're in committees. We have people who are giving testimony, who have travelled to be there. The bells go, and everything has to stop. We go back and do our votes. For 30 minutes, the bells are going. You can't speak while the bells are going. Oftentimes you don't even get back to the committee. Those people go home. They are experts. Taxpayers have paid for them.
That's one example of how we can do things better. This isn't about not working hard. Everyone is working hard, but it's how we can be better at what we're doing. To be honest, it's what I promised my constituents. When I was knocking on doors, I had people who didn't want to talk to me because I was a politician. When I engaged them in conversation, I made the promise to them that when I got here, I would do this better. I can tell you in all honesty that there are things that we need to do a lot better in terms of the way we do them in order to be more efficient. It's not about working harder but working smarter.
The other thing I want to add to this discussion here at the table—and it's something that I'm challenged by, that I find difficult—is that we have made certain suggestions, but I actually feel as though they're being unfairly spun. We're not talking about taking Fridays off; we're talking about making Fridays as meaningful as we possibly can. If that means working a full day, then work the full day. If it means that Fridays become an extra Tuesday or Wednesday during the week and we put that time in, in the discussion paper it says that. It's about extending. We could extend the time that we sit, start earlier in the year, end later in the year, all those things.
Even in regard to QP, it's frustrating for me to hear opposition criticizing a Prime Minister who goes across the country answering questions at an open mike; who, in QP, answers questions, who today answered every question during question period. I appreciate that he can do that all the time and I appreciate that you don't have to change the rules to do that, but he did that today.
It isn't about avoiding responsibility and accountability; it's about making ourselves more accountable. Even in QP, as the Prime Minister did today, we want to have him, together with cabinet ministers, accountable to Canadians. We want them to see that.
Why can we not now start calling in witnesses? We could bring them here, have a discussion with them, enter the dialogue, and then move forward, making decisions on best practices, on the evidence we've seen, and on our experiences here on how we can do better, so that at the end of the day we can better serve Canadians. The discussion paper is a starting point. We want to have the discussion. We want to get the evidence before the committee.
Thanks for allowing me to make those comments.