Mr. Speaker, it is of real urgency that we pass this bill. The hon. member is right that the deadline is May 16, after which the Public Service Labour Relations Act will apply to the RCMP. There will be a lot of confusion around this. That act was never designed to apply to the RCMP, and part of this legislation is, in fact, to adapt it to do so. To have our national police force operating under that kind of uncertainty and ambiguity from a labour relations perspective is very bad. It is bad from a public safety perspective. We are doing the right thing.
Again, the hon. member is fairly new to this House. I welcome him. He is working hard as a member of Parliament. I enjoy working with him. However, the fact is that we as a government accepted legislative changes from the committee. If he had been here in the last Parliament, he would have seen that the Conservatives never would have accepted legislative changes made by a committee.
We are engaging committees respectfully. Under us, committees are not branch plants of ministers' offices.