Mr. Speaker, a number of months ago, I had the privilege of serving with my colleague on the procedure and House affairs committee. I know my colleague does his homework and is very well-informed on this bill, so I was rather surprised to hear him, at many times throughout his speech, use words like “mistakes”, “concessions”, and “changes”, as if this was something unusual that would happen at committee level.
One of the things that he referred to was the retention of the student vote program. I can say, with confidence, that many of us approached the minister and said that in our ridings, this system was working well. That is the reason for having studies at committee: to allow input into that committee to conduct a more in-depth study than we can do in the House with all 308 members.
I am rather surprised, then, to hear my colleague refer to these changes as somehow “big concessions”. The very point of having our committees is to study in-depth the legislation that is proposed and to then make recommendations to the House after the in depth study.
Why is my colleague implying that the committee's work is somehow to simply rubber-stamp a bill that was passed here at second reading? This is the job of our committees. Why is he implying otherwise?