Although I appreciate that suggestion, let's get a sense as to what we're talking about here.
I appreciate that Mr. Cullen has the floor, but I'd love to hear what the government's thoughts are on this. They're the ones who are going to make the decision. Mr. Cullen might have a proposal—I don't know—but it's the government who will determine with the votes they have on this committee whether they're going to try to ram this down the throats of the opposition, and therefore Canadians, or whether they're not. I think that will determine a lot of what's acceptable and what's not. If they're going to try to legitimately work to allow there to be proper debate of this....
I mean, we listened in the House of Commons yesterday to the minister when they moved time allocation on this, which, I will point out, they moved notice to do after one hour of debate in the House of Commons. Then we listened over and over throughout the little half hour we got to question the government's move to do this, as the minister claimed that we should let's get this to committee and we can have this great debate, this huge, very full debate on this 350-page piece of legislation.
I want to know whether those words were simply hollow words, as we've heard before from this government, or whether they were actually a legitimate, serious intention to actually have a full and proper debate here in this committee, where we can discuss in detail the 350 pages of the bill and the many changes the bill makes to our elections law. Keep in mind that our elections law is what governs the makeup of the House of Commons. It determines who represents their fellow Canadians in the House of Commons, which therefore makes it probably as important a piece of legislation as we would ever deal with.
We heard these words and this idea that somehow their forcing time allocation and not having debate in the House of Commons.... A number of members of Parliament who wanted to speak to this legislation on behalf of their constituents were denied the opportunity because of that move. The entirety of the response from the Minister of Democratic Institutions was to say, well, they're going to provide that opportunity in committee. I guess the question is this: Will they keep to their word on that, unlike just about everything else they've ever said? Will they allow there to be that proper debate in this committee and allow members of Parliament to dig into the details of this bill, hear from witnesses who can provide us thoughts on that and then question the minister, or will they not?
That will be determining a lot of what we do here. I mean, to start talking about slotting this hour here, and that hour there....