Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 13th, 2021

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

On a point of order, Madam Chair, I don't know if anyone else is having any difficulty with the sound. Is it just me?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

I wasn't having any difficulty. Is anybody else having difficulty?

I don't see any.... Everyone is expressionless, Ms. Petitpas Taylor. I don't know what to make of it.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

I'm going to simply take my mike out to do a restart. I just want to give a warning. I don't want to miss Mr. Simms' comments. I'll just be a second.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Madam Chair, before Ms. Petitpas Taylor does that, in looking at the time, I'm recognizing that we are coming to the end of the meeting. Perhaps we could suspend and return to this delightful discussion at our next meeting.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

No.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Scott, I'm enjoying it. Let's not kid ourselves. It's great, but I'm wondering if we can continue with this discussion at our next meeting on Thursday morning at 11 o'clock.

Then, Ginette, if things work out, you don't have to worry about anything.

I'm just taking that to the chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Okay.

Scott, are you—

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

I'm a bit disappointed. This is the second time you've suspended the meeting when I've arrived. I'm going to start taking it personally.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

I'm sorry, Christine.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

I know that it has happened to a few members before, and they think it's them entering the room virtually.

Mr. Simms, is that okay with you?

Your comments are riveting and I'm also very shocked by how we've gotten to the point of app-based voting. I know that you, more than I have, have been through some gruelling discussions about changing the way we vote by even very minor adjustments before now. It's amazing. Sometimes it takes a pandemic. I wish it didn't.

Mr. Simms, are you okay with resuming on Wednesday?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Sure. I don't have a choice, I gather. I guess I do, but you go ahead. I totally respect Ms. Vecchio's point of view.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Scott, if you could call me right after this, I'm here to listen to the rest of the story on behalf of the committee. I'll send you my number.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Should I believe that? Thank you, Ms. Vecchio.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

All right. Everyone is in a good mood.

I want to say, Mr. Nater, that I really hope it doesn't snow, because you're not that far away from me, and that sounded scary when you let me know about it at the beginning of the meeting.

Let's suspend this meeting until Thursday at 11 a.m.

[The meeting was suspended at 1:01 p.m., Tuesday, April 20.]

[The meeting resumed at 11:01 a.m., Thursday, April 22.]

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

I call this meeting back to order. It's nice to see that everyone is happy and thrilled to be back. It's good to see you all.

It is April 22. We are resuming meeting number 27 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, which started on April 13, 2021.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of January 25, 2021. Therefore, members can attend virtually or in person. We don't have anyone in person today as yet so I will skip the warnings for the people in the room. I think the staff in the room are well aware.

I want to remind everyone once again to unmute your mike when it's your turn to speak. Make sure your interpretation is on so you can get the full benefit of our interpreters.

Of course, as I think Dr. Duncan mentioned, thank you to the interpreters and all the staff who have been working so hard for so long to make sure we can participate in this hybrid format. We really do appreciate all that you do to keep us going.

Thanks to all the members. You guys have been cordial over this difficult time that this committee has been having. We're at somewhat of an impasse, but hopefully, we will come to some kind of conclusion at some point soon.

As Mr. Nater mentioned, we are resuming debate on Ms. Vecchio's motion for specific witnesses to be reinvited on the prorogation study. We have an amendment to that main motion from Mr. Turnbull. We are on that amendment.

We do have a speaking list from last time. On that speaking list is Mr. Simms. After that we have Mr. Lauzon, but Mr. Lauzon is not with us today. I hear he's not feeling very well. I hope he feels better very soon and can be back with us here at committee. After that, we have Mr. Long.

Mr. Simms, I will hand the floor back over to you.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

I have a point of order, Madam Chair.

Really quickly, could you read out the subamendment just so we can ensure that everybody knows what our actual topic is for today?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Yes, I'm happy to read it out.

[The Clerk]

Madam Chair, I just emailed it to you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Let me bring it up on my screen. It reads:

That the motion of Karen Vecchio, concerning the Committee’s study of the government’s reasons for the prorogation of Parliament in August 2020, be amended by

I. by deleting paragraph (a),

II. by replacing paragraph (b) with the following: “(b) renew the invitations issued to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and the Minister of Diversity and Inclusion and Youth, each to appear separately before the committee for at least 90 minutes; and”

III. by replacing paragraph (c) with the following: “(b) renew the invitations issued to the Honourable Bill Morneau, Craig Kielburger and Marc Kielburger, each to appear separately before the committee for at least 90 minutes.”, and

IV. by deleting paragraph (d) to (h).

That is what we're looking at. You may need to refer back to the main motion as well to get a better understanding, but essentially, you can tell from there which witnesses Mr. Turnbull would like to see invited back to the committee.

Ms. Vecchio, is there anything else?

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

No. That's perfect. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Okay.

We have Ms. Shanahan also after Mr. Long.

Ms. Shanahan, welcome to the committee. It's nice to have you here today.

We will resume with Mr. Simms.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Thank you very much. To say that I am as excited as you are is probably the understatement of the day, from my own perspective, of course.

I want to start by thanking everybody and by referring to the amendment by Ryan Turnbull that considers the witnesses in this particular case.

I'll get back to the witnesses in this particular case, or the amendment that attempts to do it, but I would like to go back to the issue of prorogation. As we discussed, I think it's very important to put this in the context of what prorogation is all about, what it was meant to be, what it has become. Whether it has veered off and gone madly off in different directions is another issue all unto its own.

Many parliamentary scholars around the world, but certainly in the Commonwealth, can debate quite extensively as to why we have prorogation. I think we do have it for the right reasons, for the grand reset, to use the vernacular. I mentioned this the last time, so to go back to what I said earlier, the grand reset is obviously an election, but for people like me when you're involved in parliamentary procedure so much—and I am sure I'll get a thumbs-up from Mr. Nater or Mr. Blaikie on that one as we delve into it.

I joked last time, but I'm somewhat serious as well, when I talk about how we look at how we've evolved over a thousand years of how we do democracy. Certainly for the Commonwealth nations, and this Westminster democracy that we have, goes back to the age of the Magna Carta, the original reason why we did this. The commoners massed outside every castle that you could think of in southern England. They wanted to bring power to the people through their own representation.

I think it was more at the time if you read the tea leaves, read through the language that was written at the time. Certainly if you read the Magna Carta you will see that there was an element of protection from absolute rule of the monarchy. There was some protection for them as well, and protection for others. It was the first time we were able to do several concepts a thousand years ago, which was the separation of what was royalty and what was the power to the people, and the protections for the common people who are subjects of the Crown.

On the other side, you had elements such as those who were being accused of doing something absolutely nasty that wasn't bearable by the commoners of England to be judged by one's peers, also spoken of in the Magna Carta and other documents. We all came from that, of course, as we know. Advance several years and you come to the Statute of Westminster where we find ourselves.

Basically, the Statute of Westminster tells us that we have a right to run our own affairs, but we still are attached to the Crown, to the Westminster traditions. I say traditions because even though we have a playbook that's about this thick, we still rely on a lot of customs and traditions when we go about our day in Parliament, whether it be in the House of Commons or in the Senate.

Of all the tools in the tool box, prorogation is actually quite prescriptive. Think about it. As I mentioned, sometimes you can take the interpretation and put it madly in different directions, but I think that prorogation has a prescriptive way about how we can accomplish something in Parliament when something comes to an end and we want a restart to do something else.

You can argue its existence from here to Sunday because why would you need that when all you need is an election or you just bring in different bills once the other bills are done? What prorogation does, specifically sparked by, of course, the Speech from the Throne, is that it indicates to the average citizen where you want to go. What's wrong with that? To me that's responsible government. It doesn't even have to be part of Westminster to say to the people, “This is where we want to go, this is the target we're trying to reach”.

As we know, since the word is thrown around so much in any democracy, whether it be here, or in any other democracy like that in the United States of America, South America, or throughout the rest of Europe, accountability is key to an informed decision to vote.

The right to vote is of course in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. There is a basic and inherent right to express oneself democratically to the people one wants to lead. Some might say, “I don't want to be a leader. I don't want to be in a position where I make decisions for the masses, but I sure as hell know who I want to do it. I know what I'm looking for when that direction is laid out amongst my peers who are seeking my vote.”

That being said, prorogation does several things. It stops and starts and it's a little more.... I think in a general sense the basic principle is that the people will look at us and say, “Where is it you want to go, exactly?”

They go about doing their daily business, and whether they introduce government bills, private members' bills, motions, committee work, studies or reports, all of this stuff that's contained within both the House of Commons and the Senate comes from a vision and direction put forward by the government. I was going to say the party with the most seats, but that's not exactly right. It comes down to a very essential concept, which is the party that commands the confidence of the House and the majority of the seats. That's what you have to do.

If you think about it, we could be in a situation in which within the ranks of one particular caucus we could be choosing the prime minister and the minister of everybody. It doesn't have to be the party with the most seats; it just has to command the confidence of the House. You can rely on people outside of your own caucus to give you that confidence.

You may recall how several years ago—I forget the date now but it was probably six or seven years ago—when Cameron was elected in the United Kingdom, he didn't have a majority. He had a minority. He had two choices: he could reach out to another party to make an agreement to govern for the next four years or he could just go about the daily machinations of governing and see what happened. Every day the House is sitting you're subjecting yourself to seeking the confidence in the House to pass legislation, particularly on confidence measures such as the budget or whatever is deemed confidence at that time.

What they did, obviously, was to reach out to those in receipt of the bronze medal, the third-place team. That would have been the Liberal Democrats. What was interesting, and what taught a lesson to a lot of people, was that you would think because the Conservatives had the most seats then, they had the prerogative to seek support from another party within the House of Commons to find themselves with the majority of seats and votes to keep them going.

Interestingly enough—at least I find this interestingly enough but I don't know if you do—there were also negotiations between those who had won the silver medal, the second-place team, which was the Labour Party, and the Liberal Democrats.

The first shot went to the Conservatives to reach out, and things were looking like “Well, we'll see.” I guess when the Liberal Democrats looked at it they said, “Well, to a certain degree I feel somewhat intoxicated with power being in third place. I may have the bronze medal, but I feel like I'm on top of the podium.” At that point they were the kingmakers.

In this particular case, things weren't going that well, so they reached out to the Labour side. How does second place team up with third place to be first? If you deal in an absolute world, you think that doesn't make sense, but it actually does, because second place combined with third place gets most of the seats in the House of Commons. You have the confidence.

A year later the Liberal Democrats said, “You know, it's all wonderful and grand, but this place is a little bit much for us. We're going to take the side door and walk out.” That means in a confidence vote if only the Labour Party would be a government, then they would lose confidence and then the Queen would have to decide whether.... Okay, she has a choice. She can either pick someone else or just go to an election.

The whole point is that when you look at things like prorogation, you look at setting out a direction in which the government wants to go, after the House has chosen who that government is going to be.

Let's go from the U.K. back to Canada. Back in Canada we had a situation where the Liberals had a conversation with the NDP. I say that like I was outside of it, but I was in on it, for complete transparency. We still did not have that confidence. We still did not have enough seats, but we had an agreement with the Bloc at the the time. The Bloc said, “I'll tell you what. We won't be part of your little game, your party, but what we'll do is stay out here, and we promise we won't take you down.”

The prime minister of the day did not like that very much. I'm trying to stay away from my opinion of the whole thing. I'm just trying to lay out what happened. Prime Minister Harper sought prorogation. Now we have a conundrum. What are we going to do?

Now you have to go to the Governor General and say, “I think we need a reset.” The Governor General naturally says, “Why would you want that?” The prime minister says, “Well, we want to reset. We don't want an election, but we just want to reset and probably do something a little different. We want to present a new vision of where we're going. Maybe it's not so much new, but a revised vision as to where we want to go.”

Some prime ministers went so far as to say that they were going to prorogue over several months, because people need to be comfortable. The MPs need to be comfortable with watching the Olympics. You'd probably think that what I just said is absolutely absurd, right? It's true. The Vancouver Olympics were happening; therefore, we need to prorogue Parliament. Listen, I'm not going to cast judgment, although the tone of my voice probably does.

Let me just back away from the tone of my voice by saying this. If this is nefarious at worst, and somewhat innocent at best, no matter where it lies, the argument was really about prorogation. What is it used for and why?

If you're going to use something like this, you better come with your game face, because this is something that's highly prescriptive, as I mentioned earlier. It is something that is incredibly useful for us as parliamentarians in our parliamentary democracy.

There are several other episodes of prorogation. Let's go from that one to the one we just had recently. This is where I may get a little bit more opinionated about how I feel about this particular prorogation, only because of what is happening right now.

Preceding my intervention at the last meeting, I congratulated my colleague, Ms. Duncan, who laid out what had happened over the past little while, which was the pandemic. She is a medical professional, so she's going to do far better than I am at doing this. Not only that, she also illustrated how in her riding and in her sphere of influence COVID-19 was affecting everyday life.

What she talked about, and it may sound bland, but you'll know what I mean when I say this is an understatement. What a game-changer for governments. What a game-changer for everybody. For those cited in the Constitution, national, subnational, federal, provincial and municipal governments, what a game-changer, right?

Ask every premier across the country. Yes, I'm in Newfoundland and Labrador. It's true our case numbers are not as dramatic compared to others. Just before I got on this call, I heard that this is not a good day for Nova Scotia. For Ontario and Quebec, to my colleagues who are on Zoom and outside of Zoom, I wish you all the best with staying safe.

Let me get back to prorogation. What I just illustrated was a change in vision by a particular government.

Yes, when a government finds itself in a position where it's close to exhausting its former mandate that it brought to the people, and it finds that it wants to do something that is essential for the country but may not have been laid out before, it does this. But again, this is the prerogative of a government that finds itself in a position where it wants to do something different and doesn't feel completely comfortable just doing this by sheer dint of its own personality and by saying, “Hey, look. We can do this. We're the government.”

What we have here is a different scenario. This is where the ground has changed beneath our feet in a major way. This is the stuff that we talk about when we change what we do because of a major war. In a sense, this is a war against the invisible enemy that is this virus. We're battling on all fronts. We are nurses. We are doctors. We are truck drivers. We are teachers. We are....

Just yesterday, I spoke to a gentleman who works as a technician to hook up Internet service. You might ask how he is a front-line worker: He's now bringing school to kids. Remember, the Internet for these small communities was a great tool for schooling, and now it is the school. Given what we're going through, it is the school now, so that person is vital in a way that we could never have imagined before any of this happened.

Has the ground changed beneath our feet? It sure has and, if nothing else, this will be probably be the most important thing I want to say today: If you cannot bring in what parliamentary procedure describes as a reset in prorogation, if you can't do it now, then when? When do you do it? It's a fundamental question.

Some people might say that it's not necessary. I know that great scholars, people smarter than I am, might say that, but you know, I go back to the experience that I've had. I've been here almost 18 years now. I've probably been here longer than some of the gargoyles that exist above the West Block, for God's sakes. In saying that, I've seen a lot of this come and go, and whether you think prorogation is used for nefarious reasons or for the right reasons, I've now come to realize that prorogation has to be used when it's absolutely necessary. This is a third dimension to it that I never thought of before, until now.

There have been several headlines going back to the few times that Prime Minister Harper did it, or back when Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien did it, and prorogation got lost in an argument of who gets the advantage here. It's like a game of chess. Whose side gets the advantage of doing this? I think this prorogation is bereft of anything that is strategy, which is being talked about here—I'll be honest with you—and, sure, I realize that's the side you would expect me to take, being on the government side, but, hey, listen. There was a time when prorogation happened during the Conservative years that I agreed with too. I disagreed with many of my own colleagues and my own party as a result of that. We're not doing this over so that we can be comforted in watching the full extent of the Vancouver Olympics. We're doing this because we're at war. There have been way too many lives lost in the last little while for us to get into this.

I respect the fact that you want to get to an issue that is of importance. I'll go back to Ms. Vecchio's motion and the amendment to follow about the situation with the charity, with the individuals involved who you want to bring here, such as the Deputy Prime Minister, and as the amendment points out, the Kielburger brothers. Look, I have as many questions as anybody else in this call—I do—and I am respectful of that, and I'm respectful of your initiative to get to the bottom of this.

Let's recall now that from 2006 to 2015 I was in opposition. I know how this works. I'm not in the middle of a filibuster; I'm in a prolonged conversation on what's going on.

We've all had our share of doing the things that we do for the good of the country. Some people might think it's not. We accuse each other of not doing so. Some people look at me and ask why I would be involved in a prolonged conversation that they would call a filibuster, so on and so forth, but it is a part of democracy. Every modern democracy has it, and when we look at this, you probably think, “Why would you be involved in these sorts of things when outside of this realm of Zoom there is some nasty stuff going on?”

Well, yes, that's right. There is, but I can tell you that we all come to this particular—I was going to say this committee meeting, but this committee Zoom meeting—from a virtual perspective only to say that we truly believe in what we're doing, all of us, and I don't doubt anybody. I'm not going to undermine anyone's argument as to why they want to bring certain witnesses in whom we've already heard, or there are delays to all of this because of the shenanigans that take place in the House of Commons. Many of these shenanigans that existed in the real world now exist in the virtual world. Well, that's fine because that's who we are, as parliamentarians.

This stuff isn't going to end, but only to argue your point, what bothers me a lot these days is that instead of fighting an argument with a counter-argument that bears, in my mind, complete logic, like why this prorogation should be now, you just want to shut people down. However, let's be honest. We have a right to talk our way through this, and we should.

When I first got into politics, a person with a great deal of experience told me that now that I was in politics, now that I was starting in politics, his advice to me was simple and based on math. I asked, “What's the math? If you get more seats, you get to be government?” He said, “No, it's not that. This is very simple math. This is called a 2:1 ratio.” I asked what was the 2:1 ratio, and he said, “You have two ears and one mouth. Play to the ratio that you have. Try to listen more than you speak, and as time goes on, you might find yourself in a position where you've done far more good than not.”

To paraphrase Shakespeare, you could just keep on going and it could signify nothing, or it could signify something that you're proud of at the end of the day.

Now, would I be proud of all this? As I mentioned earlier, I was in opposition. Am I proud of all the stuff that I tried to pull? No, but I'm proud of the fact that I did my best, and at the end of the day, I'm proud of the fact that I think I represented my constituents in the best way possible, and not just my own constituents but every Canadian who wants to live in a better place.

Let me go back to the prorogation issue again, because, to me, that's the essence of what prorogation is about. We are talking about two different things on two different planes when it comes to getting answers to questions on something that happened. You want these questions to be answered on one side, and then on the other side you have parliamentary procedure and why we use the tools that we have.

That said, prorogation started off long before we were around and long before I came around, and that's quite some time. However, as far as prorogation is concerned in this country, it has a base to it.

I'm going to read some of the very base of what prorogation is all about. I got here in 2004. I think it was 2010 when I learned how to actually spell “prorogation”. I kind of knew what it was, but I didn't even know how to spell it, for goodness' sake.

It is:

a prerogative act of the Crown taken on the advice of the Prime Minister, results in the termination of a session. It is possible to prorogue a session of Parliament by proclamation when the House is sitting or during an adjournment. Both the House of Commons and the Senate then stand prorogued until the opening of the next session.

Now, there is the timing. Sometimes you could go months, to the full extent until you get the expiration of something like the Vancouver Olympics, or you could do it the next day, because that has happened too.

The time period in the most recent prorogation I think was reasonable enough—a few weeks—to allow the government to basically reorganize its priorities, to the point where we put ourselves forward as to where we want to go.

Remember now, we're in the middle of a pandemic in this. I'm going to be quite honest with you. If the Conservatives were in government and prorogued at the time that we did and then reassembled with a Speech from the Throne, I'd be at a loss to say that it was nefarious, by any stretch of the imagination.

It's a pandemic. I don't know how I can say this more often, in the fact that we're at war. On governance, look at what we've done over the past little while: CERB, wage subsidies, all this stuff.

Let's take CERB as an example, which was needed by so many of my constituents. This was not only more money, it was a new concept. We originally started with EI and realized that the system wasn't working. To say that we had to change gears to go from EI to CERB is an understatement.

If you had said to me before the last election that we would need a whole new system by which we provide benefits to people who are in trouble, completely outside of EI, and it would be delivered through the Canada Revenue Agency, I would have said, “Good Luck. Three studies and eight years later there maybe would be a modicum of it.” We had to do it. I am just outlining the challenges we faced at that time.

As an individual MP sitting in your office taking calls from people, it was “Do I qualify? Do I not? What do I do?” This was at a time when these programs were coming out very quickly. To say that the government had to be nimble is also an understatement.

The wage subsidy is probably an even better example. You had so many companies that were slipping through the cracks that couldn't qualify, you had to manoeuvre it in such a way that these people now qualified. That was not because we felt it wasn't working for us, but because it had to work for them. The intent was to get most people covered. To do that, to be nimble, is an understatement.

I'm saying that because it paints the picture that invoking prorogation was appropriate.

With regard to the effects of prorogation, our House of Commons Procedure and Practice states:

Prorogation of a session brings to an end all proceedings before Parliament. With certain exceptions, unfinished business “dies” on the Order Paper and must be started anew in a subsequent session.

Again, you look at the situation that we were in. Some of the stuff on the Order Paper, yes, was very important, and so on and so forth, but then you have to come back to it. Keep in mind that a lot of this could be brought back from the former session, which any government or anybody calling for prorogation can take advantage of as well.

Bills which have not received Royal Assent before prorogation are “entirely terminated” and, in order to be proceeded with in the new session, must be reintroduced as if they had never existed. On occasion, however, bills have been reinstated at the start of a new session at the same stage they had reached at the end of the previous session.

I heard someone describe prorogation as—and pardon my language; it's not my language, but pardon me for quoting it—“a guillotine”, or “slice it right down the middle and that's it, done.” That's not necessarily it. It's more like the big hand that comes and says, “Okay, you stop right there.” Some of it can be brought back. I'll continue:

On occasion, however, bills have been reinstated at the start of a new session at the same stage they had reached at the end of the previous session. This has been accomplished either with the unanimous consent of the House or through the adoption of a motion to that effect, after notice and debate. The House has also adopted provisional amendments to the Standing Orders to carry over legislation to the next session, following a prorogation

I'm looking to see if I lost anyone. No, you're still there. Then again, we're parliamentarians, so there you go.

I see Ken McDonald waving from way back in his office, somewhere in the deep, dark corners, in the beautiful riding of Avalon. Good to see you, Mr. McDonald.

I'll continue:

Since 2003, prorogation has had almost no practical effect on Private Members’ Business.

So the sanctity of a private member's bill remains despite the prorogation:

As a result of this significant exception to the termination of business principle, the List for the Consideration of Private Members’ Business established at the beginning of a Parliament, and all bills and motions in the Order of Precedence, as well as those outside of it, continue from session to session.[

There's the sanctity of that too.

One person I'll give credit to for doing a lot of this stuff is Paul Martin, who brought in a lot of changes to our procedures, good ones too. Consider, for instance, private members' bills. Did you know that when we vote on a private member's bill we start in the back row? Why do we do that, you ask? I'm glad you asked, Wayne Long. The point is that you won't be influenced by the front bench of your party, so the back row gets to go first.

As an aside, we used to say that the worst place to be was in the opposition or in the backbench sitting up in the corner and you had to vote first.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

We're closer to the buffet, though.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Well, that may be true. Congratulations on that, Mr. Long. I'm sure that serves you well.