Mr. Speaker, first, I want to thank the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, the House leader of the Conservative Party, for raising the matter. I was of a mind to raise it myself because today we have had a couple examples.
I was thinking particularly of the announcement made by the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food. This is the kind of announcement that at one time would have been made in the House, at all times should be made in the House and today should have been made in the House so that members of the opposition could have had a chance to comment.
The member said that this is nothing new. It has been a growing problem but it is new to this extent. There was a time when governments would make much more use of the Chamber.
Given all the talk coming from the government about parliamentary reform, it would seem to me that one of the ways in which opposition members can be inspired to think that the talk about parliamentary reform and restoring dignity to parliament and to this Chamber is serious, is for the government to prevail upon its colleagues and cabinet ministers to not do this sort of thing, but come into the House and make announcements.
This is the place where decisions are made. This is the place where announcements are made. This is the place where the nation's business is supposed to go on, not over in the press gallery. That is why we have these things up here, so the press can come in and see what is going on, not so we can be somewhere else while the business of the nation is being conducted in the press gallery. It just shows a contempt for this place and undermines everything the government might say about parliamentary reform.
I can remember responding to ministerial statements. I am sitting beside a former prime minister. When he was the minister of External Affairs, I was his critic. I will give him the credit because he used to make many government policy statements in the House. That was not true of all his cabinet colleagues. It was during that time that others started to do what this government now does as a matter of routine.
We need to get back to taking the House seriously. That is what we are here for. As long as we have a situation where anything that is really important gets announced somewhere else, and anything that is really important legislatively cannot be debated for more than a day and a half, then what the heck is the point of being here if the government is going to treat this place they way the are treating it?