Right.
As I said, I was part of the committee that studied the last election law changes. The government asked the opposition how long they needed to debate this and to have a hearing on this. That's the way that government proceeded. I mean, we spent just about every evening, for weeks, discussing that legislation in committee. That's the way these things should be discussed. Everyone should be given an opportunity to have a full discussion.
That's not what's happening in this motion. Instead, there would be one week of travel next week—a very quick timeline—and then the government would propose that we come back to Ottawa, not hear from any further witnesses, and not have a chance to have the minister, as was promised to us, come back for another hour. That was promised to us, and it won't happen under this scenario. It won't give us an opportunity to hear from any of the experts here in Ottawa who might have something to say, or give us any further chance to debate or discuss this. Then it would go immediately to clause-by-clause consideration.
For people who aren't familiar with parliamentary procedure, we would take a look at the bill clause by clause. Each clause of the bill would be looked at. There would be an opportunity to have discussion about it and make any amendments that the committee felt were necessary.
This government has said, “Great. We'll let that happen.” They have no choice, of course; they have to let that happen, but they're going to put in place a very draconian measure that would put a very strict timeline to that. For every amendment that's being proposed, it would allow five minutes of debate per party. Obviously, the government's intention is to ram this through, so that means probably five minutes total. That's not a lot of debate about something that could have a very significant impact on our elections, as some of these things certainly do.
It means they're breaking their promise, as it seems they're very inclined to do on just about everything. The minister promised full debate and discussion in committee, which is where it should happen. Instead, they're saying, nope, we're just going to ram that sucker right through.
Guess what will probably happen when it goes back to the House of Commons? They'll probably close down debate there too and ram it through. There will be changes made to our elections law, and nobody will really know for sure whether they were sensible or smart or should have been done, because no member of Parliament had the opportunity to give this its proper due and do our job, which is to scrutinize properly and question. It shouldn't matter whether we sit on the government side or the opposition side. We should all have an interest in doing that and in doing what's in the best interest of Canadians. This motion simply does not allow that.
I wanted to say all that, Mr. Chair, just to give people a sense of what we're talking about here and what we're debating. I do have more to say on this. I'll ask that you put my name on the list, and then I will yield the floor.