Okay, but the point is that whether we're talking about emerging democracies or arguably one of the longest democracies on the planet, both have the same idea about how to address the fundamental questions of how the election laws should work, and what improvements should be made.
A government that got less than 40% of the vote but has 100% of the power should at the very least ask the people, “What do you think of what we want to do?” It really is just “we”, the Conservatives, meaning them, because nobody else got a say.
I know I keep coming back to that. I'm not trying to be repetitive on the point, but it's legitimate to take a couple of basic points and come back to them and underscore them without expanding on them, so I'm constantly coming back to the lack of democracy, the lack of input, the lack of caring what anybody thinks. That's what's going on, folks.
I do not know where Bill C-23 was written, but it was not written with the input of the opposition members or the Chief Electoral Officer. That alone should scare the dickens out of Canadians, that their election laws are being treated this way. By the time Canada Day comes, if the government has their way, the Conservative election law, or rather the election law to elect Conservatives, will already be in place. The next time we'll be talking about this and being seized of it in any way is after the next election, and that's just fine with them.
Back to my point, back to my motion. From the most experienced to the newest, the richest to the poorest, democracies everywhere are showing what it is to be democratic and to give the appearance of being democratic.
That takes me back, I had talked about the referral—I'm shifting gears, as you may have picked up, but I had mentioned earlier about the process of referring from first reading, and I used my own explanation, which is never as good as the bible. As everybody here knows, O'Brien and Bosc, House of Commons Procedure and Practice, is the bible.
Chair, I did mention earlier that the government has the option, if they wanted to, to push a reset button and get us back to first reading. We still could put this back on track. It really could be done. I don't imagine at this stage, with everything we've witnessed, that the government is at all interested, but by unanimous consent the House could turn itself back. I can ask and see if he can do anything.