Mr. Speaker, I am not judging the government's intentions. My judgment was based on what will happen in practice.
First of all, in committee, there are no more than two or three members from opposition parties, which limits considerably their ability to speak. Second, a debate in committee is not as public and general as a debate in this House, where all Canadians can find out, through newspapers and television, what the members said about a particular issue.
With regard to votes on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I will tell you that a member's work in his riding is not only on weekends. Very often, we have to go back to our ridings during the week. Moreover, in the past, votes were held mostly on Mondays and very rarely on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. If we are to vote on a particular day, why not choose a day when more members are present. This would allow us to strike a better balance between our work in our ridings and our work here in Ottawa.
We were told in the past that it was impossible to defer a vote for more than 48 hours. That is what has always been done. I think there is a very simple solution: to defer votes for 72 hours. It is just 24 hours more and that is exactly what was done when the Prime Minister was scheduled to give a speech in Toronto last Monday. The government thought that 72 hours instead of 48 made a lot of sense. It allowed the Prime Minister to be here for the vote. I think that what was done for the Prime Minister could very well be done for other members of the House.