Mr. Speaker, I recently had the great privilege to work with members on all sides of the House on a book called Turning Parliament Inside Out, about how we could improve decorum in this place. One of the problems that we now see ourselves facing, it is very much in front of us, is the prospect of sitting until midnight through every day of June. It is one thing to work hard, but I have been through this before, every June of the 41st Parliament we sat until midnight every night, and unlike other members who had parties where they could trade on and off, I sat until midnight every night. I can swear to members it was not all that productive. I am not allowed to speak of the absence of members, but let us say there was lots of room in here.

The difficulty we face is that it is absolutely right, as the member for Miramichi—Grand Lake says, that the House leaders on the opposition side decided to run a campaign of dilatory motions, that this House now adjourn, that this member now be heard, that we lost lots of time, and it is as if the punishment for that is sitting until midnight until we get through an agenda.

I do not know the solution, but I can say that I can identify the problem. The problem is allowing backroom political strategists to decide what we do in this place for the benefit of the next election instead of, as members of Parliament, standing in our places on our own two feet and deciding what we should do for our constituents to make them proud.

It is a sad moment when one side of the House decides to monkeywrench and the other side of the House decides to punish. It is not what our constituents want to see. It is not productive. It is not the best solution, but I do understand how the government House leader feels forced into this by the loss of time through the tactics of the last few weeks. I do not support any side in this. I just think it is a bloody shame that we cannot work together more effectively and more collaboratively.

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In the balance of convenience in this matter, the recording of his vote matters to no one as much as it matters to the member. His constituents know when he is present in the House, as any of us are; our attendance is only registered in whether we have voted or not. It makes no material difference to how the vote was counted. I voted opposite to the member for Peterborough.

It is a matter of member’s privilege to be counted for standing for his or her constituents. Every vote should count when a member stands as promptly as the member for Peterborough did.

Dean Del Mastro: Mr. Speaker, it is standard practice in this House to take members at their word, in fact, that they are being honest when they are speaking in this House. When I stood in the House and indicated that I had, in fact, stood to vote and to be counted in the same fashion that I had previously, I was being honest.

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I have to share with the rest of the House that last year when the motion was put forward for sitting until midnight, I did not see the problem. I am not immune to hard work. I work very hard. However, I was pretty much the only person who was here every night until midnight, and no aspersions on others in larger caucuses because I know people get different assignments.

One of the things I noted was the lack of utility in the whole exercise. We spent hours discussing bills on which everyone agreed, whereas there had been short shrift given to things like FATCA, on which both my hon. colleague and I want to run back to the finance committee to try to get a proper result there, an omnibus bill on which we know there was not adequate time for debate or study.

These are not small points. The security guards, the translators and the staff of this place go through weeks and weeks for something that is extremely gruelling and I fail to see a single benefit to democracy in this place, of mandatory sittings until midnight. We went through it last year and I did not see that it improved the quality of the work. By the end of the time, the Conservatives were pushing through bills that really were not urgent and on which, if they had done unanimous consent, they could have saved the House hours of debate, late hours for translators and late hours for security guards.

It certainly is offensive, as the hon. member has pointed out, to have the only motions that are allowed during these late sittings to be from members of the Conservative cabinet.

Does my hon. colleague have a single explanation, with much more experience in the House than I have, of what benefit anyone sees, other than a sort of game of chicken, “We’ll work harder than they do. What are you trying to accomplish here? Are you ready to go for the summer?” It seems like an exercise in sadism more than anything else.

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