Madam Speaker, first, let me congratulate my friend on becoming an uncle yet again. He may have other brothers and sisters who have children as well. My congratulations to the parents of special baby Beatrice.
We have had dialogues in the past and this evening we are talking about a few issues. The member makes reference to filibusters, he talked about the prorogation, he talked about the government bringing in legislation and wanting to rush it through.
We have been talking a lot about the MAID issue, which is very important. It is a life-and-death matter. The member nodded his head in the affirmative, recognizing just how important that legislation is. However, we have a Superior Court in Quebec with a deadline that is coming up, and we see the Conservatives conducting a filibuster on this important legislation. Now, they will say that they want to have more time, but we have been debating the issue of assisted death for many years now. There have literally been hundreds of hours of debate, committee hearings and so forth. With this pending deadline, we are now hoping to get the bill into third reading as early as tomorrow, yet the Conservatives are filibustering. I guess they would argue that is a good filibuster.
The member talked about the prorogation. I do not know how he calculates more than three days, because, in theory, we were supposed to come back on September 21 and we ended up coming back on September 23. Keep in mind, we sat for four days inside this House where we literally had hundreds if not thousands of questions to the government during the summer. I think that there has been a net gain for the official opposition and other opposition parties in terms of being able to ask questions.
There is always the opportunity for opposition to work with the government. I like the word “collaboratively”. At one time, I think there was a higher sense of collaboration, and the member is right in the sense that, on the coronavirus, which I spoke earlier today about and I know how important that issue is to Canadians, we are constantly looking for collaboration. We have been receiving collaboration from all over Canada, from other levels of government, such as municipalities and provincial and territorial governments, indigenous leaders, and non-profits. There are so many sectors working with the government, and even the Conservatives, to a certain degree, have. However, when it comes to the vaccination issue, I think we may see the Conservative wanting in terms of being a little more creative in providing better solutions or ideas on distribution, keeping in mind the federal responsibilities working with provinces and so forth. We will get there, because we are listening to the health care experts and science on this issue.