Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to rise today in my capacity as opposition House leader to speak to the Liberal government motion, Motion No. 14. The motion before us essentially proposes to do one thing, the end result of which is to extend the sitting hours in the House of Commons until midnight Monday to Thursday until the end of the parliamentary sittings in June.
I would say on the face of it that with respect to working longer hours, the Conservatives absolutely support working as hard, as long, and as much as we need to. As one of my colleagues has already mentioned, we are the party of hard-working taxpayers. The people who support us in every election are the people who work shift work, in factories; who work on farms, planting, harvesting, building; who drive trucks, which haul the great things that we manufacture and grow here in Canada. We understand that there are Canadians who work long hours. For some, it is shift work, but for others it is working 12 to 16 hours a day, many times away from their families, and many times making huge sacrifices. We have men and women in the military who are away from their families for months at a time, and who make that sacrifice for Canadians because they have made a commitment to do a certain job.
On this side of the House, as Conservatives, that is what we ascribe to, and it is why we believe we are representing our constituents so well. We have no problem being here. People talk about being family friendly. Sure, we would all love to be with our families every day. However, when we decided to run for this position, our families and those people who love and support us knew what the price would be.
Therefore, I think that whatever an individual does, we have to take the costs into consideration and then go forward positively, without complaining about how hard we have to work or how we have to be away from our families. That can be difficult, but what an honour and privilege it is to work here every day. I think our families, on every side of the House, are proud of what we do. They have many opportunities that the families of those who are not working as members of Parliament do not get. Therefore, as much as I support doing things so that we can be together with our families, I believe that our job here is to represent Canadians and to work as hard and as long for them as need be.
Our issue with Motion No. 14 is not about the extended hours, as we are okay to work and we will be here. In fact, I need to mention that it was this party that rose on a multitude of occasions over the last few months to ask for emergency debates to sit longer, to be able to talk about some important things, such as the jobs crisis in Alberta, or things going on in other parts of the country. I know there have been a number of issues that have been requested as topics for emergency debate, many of which were denied. However, it is not we, as Conservatives, who do not want to work late. We like to be here debating. That issue in and of itself is something we understand.
The problem is that the Liberals have squandered an amazing opportunity that they had. They came into government with a majority, and with a House leader at that time who was working with the House leader at this time. It was a big opportunity that was squandered. I will talk about that in a few moments. Members will recall it as Motion No. 6. However, we pressed the reset button and a new House leader was put in place. This new House leader was supposed to be coming with a new tone and a mandate to respect Parliament and the work we do here. Unfortunately, the goodwill that we had been working together very well on was squandered when the Liberals decided to push ahead and change the Standings Orders unilaterally, and I will talk a little more about that. However, they have squandered an opportunity, which was the desire to work here to do things.
We all understand that when legislation is put forward by the government, it believes it has a mandate to fulfill that. We are using all the tools available to argue against that legislation and to bring our perspective forward. However, as we have seen, day in and day out, week in and week out, the Liberals have the majority, so at the end of the day when a vote happens, we lose the vote, and they get their legislation through.
Even with that, they have blown and made a mess of a whole bunch of opportunities that we have had, and I will give an example. Our Conservative government under Stephen Harper had an aggressive legislative agenda, and we worked very hard to get it done. We recognize that as government there is an agenda and we have to work to get it done.
The Liberals on the other hand, though, since they have come into government, seem to care more about the perks of being a government rather than getting things done through the passage of legislation. The Liberals have a lot of time for travel. The Prime Minister has lots of time to travel abroad. Many, many holidays are required, lots of photographs needed, lots of staged photographs needed, and then more staged photographs. It is actually a bit embarrassing to watch when we have so many—