With all due respect to Ms. Sahota, she started off her intervention by saying that we never agreed to unanimous support. Mr. Chair, we're talking about changing the Standing Orders under the guise of making life better for parliamentarians and making us more efficient. The reality is that, and I'll go back to it again, the Standing Orders are the rules by which we all play the parliamentary game. When you are about to change these rules, with all due respect, you should have, if the government is truly about making things better, or making life better for parliamentarians, unanimous support in how we're moving forward.
For Ms. Sahota to say that with all due respect, Mr. Christopherson, we never promised that we needed to have unanimous support, I think it just kind of flies in the face of the conversation that we've been having tonight. Again, going back to Mr. Badawey, and to some of the discussion we've been having earlier on, including an intervention by Mr. Arnold, Ms. Mendès, and me, I think we've had a respectful conversation tonight.
I have listened to some of the discussions before in this committee. It goes to why we're standing up and speaking the voice of Canadians, the people who elected us. Can the government, whether through this motion or whether through this discussion paper, through the things mentioned in here and in other ways, make what we do here in Ottawa more efficient?
I challenge you to just ask Mr. Simms about our fisheries committee. I came in like a bull in a china shop because of the things that I'd heard about our fisheries committee previously. I think we've done some incredible work. We work collaboratively. Do we agree on everything? No, but we find a way to work collaboratively.
I think that's all this is about. It's about trying to build that trust. Again, that trust has to come from us to the government. The government has to show that it is moving forward truthfully and that it has no ulterior motives. Right now, we don't see that.
With all due respect, Ruby, the comment you made, that we never promised or we never said that there had to be unanimous support, flies in the face of everything we're talking about tonight. It flies in the face of what Mr. Badawey asked, about why we couldn't have this respectful conversation right now, with dialogue going two ways, not just one way. As Mr. Simms said, it could be a “counter-buster”.
It should be aspirational that we have unanimous support; we should try to find a way to that unanimous support and not just have it hammered down our throats. Right now the fear is that if this motion is studied, and when it's studied with this paper that is here.... I think Mr. Christopherson mentioned the timeliness of both those documents being delivered. Mr. Simms stood in the House and truthfully talked about the timing of the paper versus the timing of his motion. That just leads the opposition—and in truth, Canadians—to fear. You just have to look at the media reports on this to see that you're not to be trusted. The government is not to be trusted.