I want to respond to Ms. Savoie, and I guess partly to Mr. Lessard.
I agree with you, Ms. Savoie, when you talk about proactive ideas. I have no argument with our needing to come here with proactive ideas. It's part of our role as parliamentarians when it comes to private members' business. Obviously, there are some things we're going to agree on and some we're not. There's no contention on that at all.
In fact, I have respect for all three of the individuals who have brought forward the three bills I talked about—Mr. Nadeau, you, and Mr. Regan. My contention is that we're coming forward with bills that aren't well thought out collectively. Obviously, these are fairly political bills; they would have to do with more than just the individuals bringing them forward, when we're dealing with things that have been brought forward within the parties.
There are some major pieces missing in every one of them: essential services in the labour bill, the aboriginal community in the child care bill, and now this provincial issue with the Liberal bill. These are major issues that are causing some problems and causing us to be spinning our wheels a lot in this committee.
Just to respond to what you said, I'm all in favour of bringing forward proactive ideas based on what are strongly held beliefs, which may be different.
This is a committee that works very well together, I think. Based on what I'm hearing from other committees, we're doing a pretty good job here. I think it's really important that when we come to the committee we have our homework done to the best of our ability and that we deal with things in a logical and common sense manner, actually trying to accomplish things.
Everything we're talking about here is taking us away from accomplishing something in the area of employability and away from accomplishing things in the area of the poverty study that I know is very important to Mr. Martin—and to all of us, but obviously pushed by Mr. Martin in the first place.
That's the point I'm trying to make. WIth each of these things we've wasted a lot of time, not necessarily because of disagreement or political philosophy, but just because homework hasn't been done ahead of time.