Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good afternoon. I'm coming to you from the beautiful riding of Saint John—Rothesay, so I am an hour ahead of you. I certainly want to thank you very much for allowing me to sub in again.
PROC is a committee that does great work for Parliament, has done great work for Parliament, but obviously we're at a point in time right now where we are certainly held up. We're stuck.
Not to repeat history, but certainly the amendment that my great friend MP Turnbull has submitted is reasonable. I think it's fair. Certainly, as we say, with everything like that there's a compromise and we need to go back and forth. MP Turnbull's amendment is valid. He certainly takes out the part with respect to the Prime Minister but replaces it, says that we'll invite the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and the Minister of Diversity and Inclusion.
Again, we've been through this before. I don't think continuing to draw a hard line in wanting the Prime Minister to come before PROC to testify accomplishes anything. The Conservative Party in particular hasn't found what they want. I think the answers have been found, but they haven't found what they want, so they need to continue to try to call more witnesses and interview more people.
I don't think we're getting anywhere. I think, again, that the compromise was fair. We had every right to prorogue Parliament. We did need a reset.
Canadians are not focused on this. Canadians want us to focus on governing. Canadians want us to focus on doing the work that parliamentarians should be doing.
Certainly, how can we not mention the historic day that we all saw yesterday with the Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland, delivering a historic transformational budget that will change for the better the course of our country and change for the better the lives of millions of Canadians? I won't go too deeply into the budget, because that's not what we're here to talk about, but when you see the delivering of $10-a-day day care, the replenishment of the trade corridor funding, housing funding, a 10% increase for seniors over 74 years of age, which is so well deserved, I can tell you that the emails I've received and the phone calls I've received are so supportive and appreciative of what we're doing.
We want to finish the fight against COVID. We want to be focused on our recovery, and we want to put people and Canadians first. That's what that budget has done and that's what we are focused on delivering.