Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Simply to put some perspective on the situation, Mr. Chair, we were all meeting here in this very room last night when the meeting was abruptly adjourned by the chair and reconvened a number of minutes later. I believe the impression that members opposite are giving is that somehow they were being called in here and they had to come from...I heard a member opposite say 131 Queen, possibly, or from home, or whatever, as if to give the impression that this was a meeting that was abruptly called in the wee hours of the morning so that people didn't have a chance to get here.
In fact, Mr. Chair, I want to remind honourable members, certainly on both sides over here, that not only were the members present in the building and within a minute's walk away, but.... As you know, we're staffed quite well at these meetings. Our staff is here, and I can personally attest to the fact that NDP staff was present in the room for the entire time, even when some of the NDP members—I believe all of them—walked out of the room. You yourself, Mr. Chair, were here in that period of time.
These delays and these games are in fact frivolous.
What is definitely correct in the statements I heard is that we're all here to represent our constituents. As my constituents want to know why I'm here in the wee hours in the morning, I'll explain to them the reasons why I'm here, some of which Mr. Shory quite eloquently expressed when he seriously raised the question as to why there would be any opposition, really, to a bill that seeks to strip citizenship from those who perpetrate crimes against our own Canadian troops, for example, as this bill so correctly does.
Mr. Chairman, in coming to my conclusion, while I appreciate that there's a great amount of partisanship here and people want to jostle their positions and pretend they're fooling Canadians...Canadians are not fooled in any way, shape or form. We've been sitting in this meeting, which has been convened now for the better part of the second day. We sat until the wee hours of the morning. Every member knows that these are procedural games that are being played by the NDP to suspend, to adjourn, when they're standing outside the door, conferring with their staff in the corners, in meeting rooms, in the lobby.
To suggest in any way, shape or form that a meeting was convened and in some way a member's privilege in representing their constituents was somehow violated because it's possible they would not have been near the precinct at 1:57 a.m. is untruthful, disingenuous, and definitely frivolous.
I wanted to go on the record and say that to this particular point of order.
Thank you.