Thank you, Mr. Chair, for allowing that for the good people of St. Albert—Edmonton.
By the way, I actually quite like Mr. Cooper. He's a nice enough guy, but I think it is problematic in this place when we start....
Mr. Cooper, by the way, is trying to circumvent the process, which of course is in the House. It is that, at any point, if a majority of members of Parliament in the House have lost confidence in the government—and the Conservatives have failed three times to establish that—then eventually there will be an election in 2025. It could go the distance, and we would have to actually ask ourselves if it should be October 20, which I think it should be, if that's the case and if parties want that. Of course, there is a budget coming in 2025. There are a number of confidence votes where perhaps a majority of MPs will actually bring it down.
However, I think it is problematic when you have members of Parliament calling into question the reason MPs serve and the reason MPs do their work here in this place. It is a very corrosive and slippery slope, especially when the person who is moving the subamendment—I'm quite confident—has the same entitlement or has a larger entitlement to a pension than the person he is trying to call into question and play political games on. That is the problem I have.
If we start to do this kind of stuff, we get into the provincial situation. In Nova Scotia, they have politicized the pay packet of MLAs so poorly that the contribution amount now is such that it's very difficult to find people who want to do the work because of the realities of the difficulty of the job and because of the stress it puts on their families. I understand there hasn't been any type of remuneration increase in almost 15 years. I want to highlight that.
I do want to apologize to the witnesses. Thank you for the work you do. There is important work happening here before the committee, and we get stuck into this ridiculous stuff.
I want to highlight for the record that, again, if we're going to go into the ditch, we might as well go right into it, Mr. Chair. It was interesting. I was at a celebration of life this weekend, and we were talking politics with some young men. There was a young constituent in my riding who was talking about politics, about the Prime Minister and about the leader of the official opposition. He asked how long the leader of the official opposition has been an MP and when he got into this. I said that he has been doing this his entire adult life. He was elected at 24, with no work experience outside of this place.
By the way, the member for Carleton has served Canada for 20 years. I don't begrudge that fact. What I begrudge is that the Conservative Party members come to this place, start throwing rocks when they live in glass houses and start calling into question the integrity of MPs who serve. I have said in the House that Pierre Poilievre is the biggest fat cat here in Ottawa. He lives in Stornoway and represents a riding 30 minutes away.
By the way, I have no problem with that, but if you're going to call into question the reason MPs are serving, then that's the problem I have, that there is the audacity to do that. I am playing a bit of that game with Mr. Cooper here right now, where he moves a subamendment on a pension entitlement that he has, which is larger than Mr. Singh's.
The people of St. Albert—Edmonton should be asking themselves if that's the way they want to see their member of Parliament act in here. I hope not. I know it's part of the political games that we play here.
I also want to highlight that Mr. Poilievre qualified for a pension at 31. If we're going to play this game, then maybe we should actually be having conversations about retroactively changing the contributions and the pensions of MPs who are serving, including those back to 2015. That's good. Mr. Cooper seems to be in favour of that type of conversation. Maybe we need to start having that one as well.
I just think that when you look at this, it is very clear that there is a clear consensus to support what Ms. Barron said. If there is a will in the House of Commons to actually bring down the government, that will happen on its own in 2025, or based on this legislation—if it can ever get through and if the Conservatives aren't going to filibuster clauses about trying to help seniors in long-term care facilities have the ability to access the vote—we'll have a fixed election date, and by law, we will have an election in 2025.
Let's be careful not to throw rocks when you live in glass houses. Let's be careful not to call into question the integrity of MPs who serve. We are very privileged, as members of Parliament, to have the ability to serve our constituents. We have the privilege to have resources, to have people on our staff and in our constituency offices. While I have the floor, I'd like to recognize my staff at home, who do tremendous work for Canadians.
However, when we start calling into question why MPs are voting the way they do, or why they're supporting.... You can call into...why are you doing this, but if it's all around that insinuation, it is a damn slippery slope, and I don't think we should be doing it.
I support Ms. Barron's motion to move the election from the 27th inadvertently back to the 20th so we don't bring into disrepute the reason that MPs serve. There's a clear consensus to move on that. Let's not waste any more time. Let's not see any more filibustering. Let's go forward.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.