Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I apologize to Mr. Angus. Perhaps my French let me down a little. I didn't mean to say it was Mr. Angus' motion. I was saying that I am counting on everyone's good faith. Since we are all parliamentarians, we support these parliamentary principles, and it is important to do so.
Mr. Fortin has proposed a motion that, on the one hand, upholds fundamental parliamentary principles, and I applaud him for that. However, at the very end, his conclusion includes items that are misleading. We have seen this in points 4, 5 and 6. If you look at it one point at a time, you may think that it is not very serious and that it is not fatal. However, when we come to the end and have to express our dissatisfaction because of the small errors that we found in the previous points, we realize that we are moving away from the foundations and principles of Parliament.
These principles are extremely important. We have all these privileges granted to us as members of Parliament. We are men and women who have the right to sit in the House of Commons with all the responsibilities that we have. As long as we have a constitutional parliamentary system in Canada and in all the provinces and territories, it is important that we respect these traditions, which are very clear.
The federal government has a Parliament of elected officials and an upper house. In the provincial legislatures, there were upper houses, which disappeared in the decades following the founding of Canada. As elected officials and parliamentarians, we must respect the constitutional traditions of our parliamentary system until the Constitution is changed by a vote.
To do this, we have the Prime Minister who, as I said, is a member of cabinet like all the others. This Council of Ministers represents the government, which recognizes the fundamental principle of cabinet solidarity. When a member of the Council of Ministers makes a statement on policies that are the responsibility of the government—