I'd like to make a very blunt point here in regard to Mr. Siksay's remark. If this is all about parties, then the Bloc Québécois and the Liberals should be giving up some of their time, because the Liberals have lost 26 seats from the previous Parliament. The Bloc Québécois lost 2 seats. The New Democrats, with byelection gains and the general election, picked up 8. The Conservatives picked up 19. Also, it should be noted that Mr. Arthur, for committee purposes, sits as a Conservative as well.
If that's true, then the NDP and the Conservatives should get more time from the Bloc Québécois time and particularly from the Liberal time. So if this is all about parties, that should be noted.
The second thing is that there is a bit of leeway here to give to parties, because, as we note in our proposal, as previously, the first New Democrat gets a full seven minutes. The first New Democrat to speak is given the five minutes for being a member, as it were, and a two-minute bonus for being the representative of the party, for a total of seven minutes. Other members farther down the list don't get seven-minute rounds, so the New Democrats are already advantaged because of their party's position, rather than being treated merely as individual members.
So to look at the points, we already have given some advantage to the party and we should give some consideration to members individually. Members from the same caucus do not always ask the same questions or have the same interests. There's a purpose to representing constituencies here. In the previous Parliament, we had Mr. Harris and Mr. Allen from ridings with a lot of forestry. I have a mining background. Mr. Anderson comes from an oil and gas riding. We have more members here. There are actually different interests that involve constituents.
When we did a forestry report and an oil sands report, there were different interests involving constituents in those reports. It was not merely the party interest in those reports. I take great umbrage at those who think the only thing we are here for is as tools of parties.
I do not know about other members of the committee, but I don't always agree with where my party goes. I don't check my brain in at the door and just forget to do it. Perhaps other members from other parties do. They apparently do that, but there's absolutely no way that I'm going to go that way.
