Thank you, Ms. May, and thank you, Mr. Chair, for allowing that intervention. That is a fascinating discussion and it's an appropriate parallel as well.
Being a Lutheran, we're traditionalists ourselves. We still use Luther's Small Catechism and his Large Catechism. It allows for that comparison. Certainly, some of those things talk about democratization. Some of the great things of the past still apply.
I would say that I will, when I quote from different documents, try to provide the reference as best I can. I know that our Hansard reporters do exceptional work, and they do have verification practice. I will try to make their lives as easy as possible. In my last intervention, there were many questions arising from what I quoted from. So I will provide them with as much information as possible and save my staff some problems in trying to read my mind about where I got different things from.
I'll be quoting from Ned Franks, C.E.S. Franks, The Parliament of Canada, University of Toronto Press. I believe the publication date is 1987. This is now a 30-year-old book, but it is still one of the go-to books on Parliament and parliamentary democracy. Certainly, Professor Franks is still very active, though he is now an emeritus professor.
In his book he talks about many of the different functions and aspects of Parliament. He quite rightly talks about the role of Parliament itself, from a broad standpoint. He also talks about some of the reform proposals in his book. I might go into those a little later, but I want to talk more about the key functions of parliament and how it applies to where we're at today.
On pages 4 to 5, he identified four functions:
to make government, that is, to establish a legitimate government through the electoral process; to make government work, that is, to give government the authority, funds, and other resources necessary for governing the country; to make a government behave, that is, to be watching over the government; and to make an alternative government, that is, to enable the opposition to present its case to the public and become a credible choice for replacing the party in power.
The third and fourth functions are being eroded, as Mr. Richards comments. There's no question that the government has a legitimate and fundamental role to govern. We had an election; my party lost. Very clearly, that's not in debate. We won 99 seats. As our then prime minister said on election night, the people elected a loyal opposition, but they also elected a government. Certainly, the Prime Minister, his cabinet, and his members have the right and the privilege to govern this country by that virtue. There's no debating that. It's clear, it's legitimate, and it's a majority government at that.
The second of the four functions is to make government work. There's no question that the government has the right to put forward a legislative agenda, supply bills, and a budget. We saw a budget put before the House on March 22, and that is certainly within the right and purview of the government—so much so that only a government, only a minister of the crown, can put forward an authority to spend money. That is certainly a long-standing right of the party in power, the government, a minister of the crown, and this dates back to Magna Carta.