It sounds great, and it's this nice package. It says all the right things, but it's really just like one of those dolls: you pull the string and it has a few things that it says. There's not really much substance behind it, and there isn't much action. That's kind of how it works with this government. It's pretty frustrating, to say the least, to have to try to deal with that.
Here we are. We got this dropped on the table in front of us. They want to ram it through. The opposition says to hold on second, that this is not the way it's done. It has never been the way to do this. This is highly unusual. It doesn't really seem to be in keeping with the spirit of fairness. It doesn't seem to be in keeping with what's in the best interests of Canadians. If that were the real intention, one would think that there would have been someone saying, “Hey, we're thinking that maybe this needs to be our priority list, and we're going to raise this.” They could have said that they were going to bring it forward, and they could have let the Elections Canada officials know, saying to them not to waste their time, not to come by, that we were going to have this discussion that day.
Rightfully so, my colleague Mr. Reid brought forward an amendment, quite a reasonable amendment. For the life of me, I still cannot understand why members on the other side would not want to approve it, go along with it, and work from that basis. It's the way things have been done. They seem like reasonable people. I would think that in their heart of hearts they probably want to proceed with us in that fashion. I do think that. We've heard that from them. I think they would like to do that. The amendment would allow that to happen.
Yet from somewhere above, I think they're saying they're not going to accept that, because that way they don't get to do whatever they want. They don't get to ram this through. They don't get to make any changes they want without the opposition having a say. This way means doing it without Canadians having a say. If one party gets to do whatever it wants, that means Canadians are left out and are not a part of the process.
I hear a phone ringing.