Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague has just given one example of many that could be the start of a very slippery slope in this place. If a person breaks his or her word once, I suppose the person could break it all the time. When agreements have been made to pair when committees travel, for example, and one party does not keep its word because some other party broke its word on another agreement, then we begin to have serious problems, which is why I keep emphasizing and re-emphasizing the importance of members in this House keeping their word when we make agreements with one another.
All of us can give examples of agreements we have made with members opposite on a host of different issues. I would suggest that up until this point in time most members felt they could trust the person opposite. I think most members opposite would agree that if someone gives his or her word on a certain issue, we believe in that person's word and we have confidence that the person will honour that commitment. While it has worked fairly well up until now, I would suggest that the trust is gone, which is extremely unfortunate.