Mr. Speaker, I will not reference the fact that members opposite are reading the newspaper and not participating in the debate. I understand that to be unparliamentary. I withdraw those comments.
The issue is quite clear. Parliament has very few sitting days, and those sitting days are all precious and the priorities of our constituents matter deeply to each one of us. I know that to be true. I feel sorry for the members opposite who cannot bring their issues forward because their House leadership is more interested in playing stub-their-toe politics than in putting good, strong policies in front of this House and good, strong ideas in front of Parliament, so that all of us can debate and consider the needs of Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
The problem with this House sometimes is that it gets engaged in these games, these 20 hours of voting and histrionics around one scandal or another. As I said, if they want to go back and prosecute them all from Confederation, they can knock themselves out. We have a country to build. We have people to help. We have a government to run and a Parliament to be responsible to. I find it shocking that members of the party opposite think that this game does anything other than undermine their credibility. It has completely undermined their credibility. When the House leader stands up and says, “Here is a motion that requires debate; please do not talk about”, and sits down and thinks that is being clever, I can assure members that Canadians will assess it in a very different way.