Mr. Speaker, I was commenting on the fact that tradition in this parliament, thanks to the Liberal government, has been that when important things come up for debate, we debate them only briefly and then time allocation is invoked whereas we seem to be able to debate unimportant things for a long time.
When we are debating things that even the government says are important, as the hon. member in his own way has pointed out, and I know it is not proper to refer to individual members not being here, but collectively speaking, government members are not in the Chamber. This is something that has been raised before with the government.
Government consistently shows contempt for the House of Commons by not taking upon itself the responsibility of maintaining quorum. This is something that in the past governments did as a matter of course, as a matter of routine. It was regarded as part of governmental responsibility. The government after all has 150 members yet it cannot muster four. Well, it has just mustered four of 150. Yet it expects the opposition to maintain quorum. But I am not here to talk about quorum. I am talking about the motion before us. As I said before, we support this motion because we believe the committee—