Thank you, Mr. Chair.
When we have these conversations and we talk about various different issues that this committee is discussing, certainly being family friendly was very important.
Like you, Mr. Chair, I live in western Canada. I live very far from Ottawa. In fact, it takes me about twelve and a half hours door to door to get home, and that's actually in the middle of my riding. If I actually went as far as where my home is in Tofino on the west coast, it would take me about fifteen and a half or sixteen hours to get home. So often when I leave Ottawa, if I leave on Thursday, I get home around 4:30 in the morning eastern time, and that's in the middle of my riding. If I went all the way home to Tofino, I'd get home around 7 in the morning. That's after driving and flying.
Mr. Chair, on Fridays when I leave, I leave here about one o'clock Pacific time, when I wake up. As parliamentarians, we typically have an event on Friday night that we have to speak at. Like Mr. Waugh and many of us western MPs, we're travelling great distances. We're already spending a great amount of time away from our families and we take a risk when we're flying for twelve hours and driving another few hours in our big ridings.
I know you certainly appreciate that, Mr. Chair. I have a riding that's 8,500 square kilometres.