Mr. Speaker, let me start off by stating that I am actually quite appalled at the hon. member for Glengarry--Prescott--Russell for moving this concurrence motion today on a couple of fronts.
Because of his longevity in this place, and I have only been here 12 years, I have built up a considerable respect for the hon. member. During my remarks today I am going to reveal the true meaning of what he is up to by moving this concurrence motion in a committee report today. It certainly would be relevant to the debate today.
It is unfortunate that despite two or three instances during his remarks, both during his speech to this debate and during his response to one of his colleagues, he said that he did not want to use up too much House time and that he wanted to be rather succinct. He alluded to that. Yet, I did not have the opportunity to ask him a question because he only responded to one question which was quite a short question. The member for Glengarry--Prescott--Russell then went on for some eight minutes to ensure that other people would not have the opportunity to ask him a question.
I wanted to allow him the opportunity to respond to a question rather than it being, as it is now, part of my remarks. It is ironic that a couple of weeks back, I do not have the exact date but I can certainly get it from Hansard , the member for Glengarry--Prescott--Russell was the very individual who rose in this Chamber and chastised the official opposition for abusing, in his opinion, concurrence motions.
This is a relatively new process where any member can, as the hon. member is doing today, bring forward concurrence in a report from a standing committee. Yet, a couple of weeks ago he launched an impassioned rant in this place of how it was just absolutely an abuse of democracy for the official opposition to be using concurrence motions in this fashion despite the fact that some of the motions that we had brought forward were on extremely important subjects, for example, compensation for all victims of hepatitis C.
I do not think anyone from any of the four parties in this Chamber would argue that it is not an extremely important issue. It is something that the Conservative Party and its predecessors have raised many times in this and other Parliaments and we finally drove that to a vote under the new Standing Orders. In fact, on the very night of the vote the Liberal Party reversed its long-standing opposition to providing all victims of hepatitis C with compensation and made it unanimous by supporting the motion.