Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to speak.
I can't express how really disappointed I am. We know who the government is. We know who has the numbers. Quite frankly this is supposed to be the grown-up committee. When the House and the Speaker finds themselves in one heck of a mess and things need to be unpackaged, thought through, and given serious reflection, they send it to this committee. There's a reason for that, because the rest of us in the House look to this committee to play that role.
At the end of the day, whatever the government wants to do, the government is going to be able to do because it has the numbers. But the name of this committee is the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. This is about procedure.
Mr. Chair, I'm really getting angrier by the moment as I think not so much about the substance at this point, but the process and the procedure and how undemocratic this is. I'm not going to dwell on this, but will say it once more just to get it off my chest, that clearly Mr. Reid is playing the role of a stalking horse for the government on this. I'm really disappointed that it would be him, or anybody at all, but particularly him personally. I have to believe that at the end of this he is going reflect on this and ask if it were really worth spending some of his political capital on, some of his hard-earned reputation. But that remains to be seen and that's not the focus here, and I shan't refer to it again unless I feel I need to. Since I have lots of time, you never know.