Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to enter into debate on this concurrence motion.
However, before I go any further, I want to recognize the fact that this is National Nurses Week throughout our country, and we have so much to be grateful for, for the nurses out there on the front lines right now, particularly over the last 15 months or so. The incredible work they do is truly remarkable. We have asked so much of them during regular times, and more recently the demands that are being put on nurses throughout the country are truly remarkable, but they rise to the challenge and they are there to take care of Canadians.
This morning I got my first shot of the AstraZeneca vaccine at a clinic not too far from here, which was so well run. I walked in, went through the check-in and got to a gentleman by the name of Renault, who was administering the shot. He told me that he had worked at that clinic for 30 years and came out of retirement in order to help with administering vaccine shots. Nothing, in my opinion, is more patriotic than somebody who rises to the call of that profession once in retirement in order to come back and take care of Canadians. Indeed, I want to extend a huge thanks to all the nurses and frontline workers out there who are taking care of us and keeping us safe.
We are here today to talk about this concurrence motion. I find it very interesting that we are having this discussion in light of the fact that the Conservatives knew that what we wanted to talk about today was Bill C-19, which is proposed legislation on how we would deal with an election during a pandemic. It is a piece of legislation that was crafted in response to the Chief Electoral Officer, who pointed out that, as we are in a minority Parliament, there is always a chance of an election coming up at any moment and maybe it is a good idea to have some plans in place in the event that it does happen. Despite the fact that nobody might want an election, we do know that in minority governments elections can happen, and it is really not controlled by any one particular party, because there is no majority.
One of the fascinating things about what the Conservatives have done today is that they have taken a really interesting route in bringing forward this concurrence motion. We had an emergency debate on this issue last week. We stayed here until midnight debating the issue. The Conservatives did not offer anything, did not offer any solutions and did not talk about the recommendations that came from the committee, which I will talk about. All they did was sit on the other side of the House and criticize the government.
The role of the opposition, believe it or not, is not just to criticize, but to actually try to improve upon policy and push the government to do better. Now, I do not know how much experience Conservative members have in trying to encourage people to do things, but I can tell members that there are different approaches that one might take. For example, when I want my four-year-old to do something for me and to work with me on something, if he takes the approach of yelling and screaming at me and telling me how horrible of a parent I am, it might not be the best approach if he is genuinely trying to get something out of me. Likewise, I can say that the opposition members, if their strategy to encourage the government to do better is just to yell and scream at it all day long, they are certainly delivering on their—