Mr. Speaker, I did that for a couple of reasons: first, because I am tired of seeing either no one or one or two members on the government side, and second, it relates to one of the recommendations in the modernization committee report which we are now debating, and that is the recommendation to have committees sit at times other than when the House is sitting, in the way that the House used to be run when I first arrived here 22 years ago.
What we now have with this telescoping of the timing of the work of committees and the sitting of the House into the same period of time is a situation that is rendering this place increasingly irrelevant and increasingly meaningless in terms of the sense one has when one is participating in a debate on the floor of the House.
We should at least have the feeling, Mr. Speaker, and we should in fact have the reality that we are actually speaking to somebody, not just to you, with all due regard to the intensity with which you listen to what we have to say. The fact of the matter is that if there is no one on the government side to talk to, to even hear our--