Madam Speaker, I can only reflect that, unfortunately, in all of the conversations I have had with the opposition House leader, there just has not been any interest in engaging to talk about the calendar or moving things forward. Every time we talk, it is more obfuscation. That is disappointing to me, because I have to say that I was hoping for more and I continue to hope for more.
It is important to reflect on two things. One, I was here in opposition. It is a little difficult for me to listen to the Conservative Party, which used time allocation not as a tool, but as a hammer to hammer the opposition every day that it was there. It literally created a playbook 200 pages long talking about how to control committees and shut them down, and telling its members exactly how to puppeteer all of these committees: to object now, after four months of blocking any government legislation from moving forward; to object now, when we have all of these important issues for Canadians that are expected to be dealt with; and to object now, when we are utilizing these tools so that this place can get its business done.
The Conservatives represent only a small fraction of the members in the House. They do not have the right to hijack all of Parliament. If they were to win a majority government, they could go back to using a cudgel to hammer the opposition and ram things through and not allow debate, as they did before. They could do that.
They do not have a majority. We do not have a majority. We are attempting to work with other parties. I would say to the party members opposite that if they want to be constructive, and if they want to get things done and if they do not want to spend the next three years simply blocking everything that moves, they should talk to us. We want to work with them to move things forward.