Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Charlottetown. He is the chair of the committee that produced the report, and I will leave it to him to discuss the very important issues specifically as they relate to the report.
What I would like to do with my time is point out some issues that I see with, once again, the manner in which the Conservatives are bringing forward motions just to delay and to prevent anything from happening in the House. For starters, the report was endorsed unanimously by the committee. The entire committee voted in favour of it, that is, the Liberals, the Conservatives and the NDP. There was no dissenting report, to my knowledge. There certainly was not anybody who voted against the report.
One has to ask themself why the Conservatives would bring the report forward when they know it has been unanimously supported. The only rationale, in answering that question, comes from the same place of so many of the reports from committees having been tabled in the House: Conservatives are just putting up concurrence reports, one after another, every day, because they know it burns away three hours of the day. It is so completely disingenuous. I would argue it actually does a disservice to the very important issue being discussed in the motion and the report as it relates to breast cancer.
The speaker before me read out the motion or report. I will read it myself. It is literally one sentence:
That the committee report to the House that the decision by the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care should be immediately reversed and breast cancer screening should be extended to women in their 40s, as this will help save lives; that the Minister of Health urge the task force to go back to the drawing board and revisit the guidelines based on the latest science; and that the Public Health Agency of Canada table to this committee the parameters given to the task force to update breast cancer screening guidelines.
That is the entire report, so I am perplexed. I have been here for nine years, and I have seen so many concurrence reports being tabled and concurrence motions being moved in the last two and a half to three months. In my opinion, it is just another delay tactic of the Conservatives because they are running out of people to speak to the motion on the question of privilege.
Well over 220 people now have spoken to the motion. To give folks at home who might be watching the proceedings a comparison, there have been, in total, about 22 Liberal, NDP and Bloc speakers, so 22 speakers from four political parties that represent well over the majority of the House, and over 220 Conservatives, who have spoken to that particular motion.
Why is that important and why is it germane to the discussion we are having today? It is because the Conservatives have run out of talking points. I think AI has just said, “I'm sorry, I cannot produce another speech for you. There have been way too many requests for a 20-minute speech.” The Conservatives are just at a point now where even moving an amendment that resets their speaking order is not effective anymore because literally everybody has said absolutely everything there is to be said.
Even sitting in here and listening to Conservatives speak on and on ad nauseam, it is very clear that we drift away into other topics routinely. We are even well beyond the point of anybody's calling relevance anymore, because it is absolutely pointless.
I will say that the issue of breast cancer screening is very important to me, and in particular to my wife. There is a history of breast cancer in my wife's family, so she regularly gets screened and tested. When it comes to issues that are so critically important, I do not think we should be using a motion like the one before us, on a report that has been unanimously passed in committee, as a political tool in the House to delay what we talk about and what we do.
The reality is that when it comes to an issue that relates to health, it is so critically important that we do everything we can to support women and the proper screening to protect them from possibly being diagnosed with breast cancer. We do a huge disservice to the seriousness that requires when a motion comes from a committee that was unanimously supported, had no dissenting reports and is used as a political tool in this House to slow this place down and create disorder. That is, unfortunately, what we have seen once again.
No objective person looking at what has happened and the countless number of concurrence motions that Conservatives have put forward over the last three months could possibly ever come to the conclusion that they are being genuine in their actions. They are not. They are doing this strictly for political reasons.
At the very least, I would ask my Conservative colleagues, if they are going to do that, to please pick some issues that perhaps are not as sensitive to so many people and affect so many people in our country. They should not play politics with an issue like this. In my opinion, it is extremely despicable.
In any event, I am going to end there. Like I said, I am sharing my time with a member for Charlottetown, the chair of this committee. I am sure he can provide much more insight into the discussion that took place when this was at committee. I look forward to hearing what he has to say because I am sure that he will be able to fill the House in on some of the very meaningful discussion that was had around producing this report.