Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate this afternoon. I listened attentively to most of the speech of the hon. member, apart from a couple of minutes when one has to do what one has to do. Otherwise I listened to as much of the speech as I could. I have had time to review the notes that I wanted to use today, but upon reflection and upon listening to the hon. member's speech, I thought I would do away with those and simply react to a number of things he has raised and otherwise inject some views.
The first day we came back here after the recess, it was made clear to us that the opposition was going to have what it called in its words, a work slowdown. The initial reason for the work slowdown by the opposition was that those members did not like, according to them, the then solicitor general and they wanted his resignation as a precondition to not having the slowdown. The then solicitor general, for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with that, but in defending his honour, decided to withdraw from the cabinet.
Then the opposition members decided they needed a new target for a work slowdown. What I am saying here has occurred and I have seen every single step of it. The next target of the work slowdown was not to elect committee chairs until they could start up this issue, and they did.