Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his speech. I will say that, as a father of a young family and as someone representing a riding in western Canada, I see personally, from a lifestyle perspective, the advantages of the current provisions, although I have concerns about their impact on this institution. I do support the voting app, because I do not think voting is the same as giving a speech.
I want to put to him a question I put to a government member. The biggest problem I have with how things are working right now is the way the resource crunch associated with hybrid has totally undermined the ability of parliamentary committees to be masters of their own domain. Parliamentary committees used to be able to sit when they thought it was necessary for them to sit to do the business of that committee. It meant that if the industry committee was dealing with a crisis related to industry, that committee could decide to sit, fundamentally, whenever it wanted in order to do its work. Now, it is some kind of process involving party whips that determines who gets resources and when. It is not the committees, it is not the members of the committee, and there is not the same ability to actually pursue the work that is required.
The parliamentary secretary acknowledged this problem and said we can figure it out at some point. The concern I have is that we have not figured it out. We have had this problem persisting for years. I think it is a fundamental enough problem for democracy, ensuring that parliamentary committees can do their job, that we need to actually consider that when considering how to vote on these provisions.
Does the member have concerns about the way parliamentary committees have been constrained by resources and the way they are effectively controlled in their ability to sit by those outside of those committees? Does he think this is a fundamental enough issue to say that we need to fix that problem before we move forward in any way with the rest of these provisions?