Mr. Speaker, my question for my colleague builds on some of his early comments about the government's pattern of behaviour in bringing forward legislation that it knows to be unconstitutional. I would like him to address this while taking into account three things.
The first is that the government has already been found to be in contempt by the Speaker of the House of Commons for the first time, not just in Canadian history but commonwealth history, for not bringing forward costs on crime bills.
The second thing I would like him to take into account is that there is a legal duty on the Minister of Justice to bring forward legislation that is deemed to be constitutional and, I would argue, goes further because, as a lawyer, the Minister of Justice is bound as an officer of the court to do so.
The third is that the day after David Daubney retired, a former Conservative member of Parliament who used to head up the criminal law policy unit for the Department of Justice, he assaulted the government for forcing that unit to be unable to deliver up options which it told the government would be constitutional with its crime bills.
Could my colleague explain the pattern of this kind of deceptive and unacceptable behaviour?