Senator Gold: My apologies, honourable colleague, but if I may ask you a question. I think you made a really good point about our calendar, as others have made as well. If we go back in history — and those with more experience will confirm this — our Senate calendar was organized differently to better accommodate the work of the House and the corresponding work of the Senate.

Do you think a potential solution to the problem that is being voiced is for the Rules Committee to take a look at our calendar and perhaps we could sit for a couple of weeks in July, or at least after the House rises? We could take away a couple of weeks or do some switching in terms of the calendar, such that if and when, as I think history reveals, bills do come to us in June, to put them in the window. Sometimes, because they are a matter of importance, we do take the time, as you’ve suggested, to study them and have the ability to do our work with an expectation that that’s, in fact, how we carry out our work, not simply — regardless of what the House says or the government says — “well, we’re off for our two and a half months of summer break.”