Madam Speaker, I certainly agree with the hon. member that this is the gold standard, but given the expiration of CERB yesterday, we are in a situation of real urgency and that help needs to get to Canadians.
I am as frustrated as anybody that the opportunity was not afforded to Parliament to do that very work and to follow that normal process. This was as a result of a government trying to run and hide from a political scandal that it created without any prompting and for no good reason. However, now we find ourselves in the situation we are in.
I hope Canadians are paying attention. I hope they will remember this come election time, this crass disregard the government had for Canadians' vital interests. However, now we need to make sure that there is a net to catch all of the people who are coming off of CERB, and that requires us to be flexible.
I think we need to draw a box around a lot of the procedural things that have happened during the pandemic and recognize that we are not setting precedents for how Parliament ought to operate normally. What we are doing is working hard to get the help to Canadians that they need on an urgent basis. With a different government and a different attitude in government, we could have done that in a way that observed more of the normal parliamentary process. It is regrettable that we do not have a government that is willing to do that in good faith. Nevertheless, what needs to come first is the interests of Canadians, and those are what we are here to support first and foremost.