Having been here since 2008, I have never missed a vote because of a timing issue. I know where I am and I know my surroundings, so I build in the travel time. It depends on where you are in the precinct. When I had offices on the other side, in Gatineau, I knew how much time I needed to get here. It's the same as being in the Justice Building. I know how much time I need.
If I may point something out to the members of the committee that we haven't talked about specifically, but that I did tell you in my testimony—and I don't know whether or not you followed up with the officials—the bus did not go through security, right? The bus didn't go through the security at all. Perhaps that's the reason the Hill became sterilized at that point and they didn't let anybody else up on the Hill: because that bus was not secured. No one inspected the bus. No one identified the people on the bus. That's why there was a motorcade with the bus: in order to bring it up onto the Hill.
If that's the case, then you should have a conversation with security about checking that bus, because the expediency for journalists attending a budget on the Hill should not be greater than it is for members going to the Hill for the presentation of the budget. If it's too much work to investigate everybody on the bus or to look over the bus, or to do the little mirror thing under the bus, that's their calculation, but it seems to me that it was in the balance of convenience for security as opposed to the balance of our privilege as members.
That's the key point that I wanted to bring out today.