Mr. Chairman, we're here debating what is effectively a closure motion, or time allocation, which has become a bit of a theme since we've been back, since May 2.
May 2 seems to be a date at which the Conservatives decided they have the right to bully their way through Parliament. Since the election, time allocation has been invoked nine times by this government. We only sat in June for two or three weeks. It was used twice then, and time allocation has been used seven times since we came back in September. Seven different bills have been affected by time allocation, six of them since September.
We came back on September 20, we sat for two weeks, then we had a week's break, came back for another three weeks, and then we had another constituency week, and now we're back for four weeks with lots of opportunity to deal with this in a reasonable manner as reasonable, professional parliamentarians on a committee that is supposed to be dealing with justice and human rights, some of the most important values of our society—so valuable and important that they're covered in the Canadian Charter of Rights Freedoms. Much of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is about ensuring the rule of law and the protection of citizens and human rights through the constitutional method.
Our committee is called the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. We're now having imposed on us—or there is sought to be imposed on us—time allocation on a bill in order to prevent proper discussion and consideration, not of one but of nine bills that have been put into a pot and called the Safer Streets and Communities Act. We can and do have legitimate disagreements about this legislation. We feel that these legitimate differences should be aired and discussed. Reasonable amendments are being put forward, and whether they're accepted or not, they're presented in a bona fide attempt to make the bill more acceptable to the Canadian public and more acceptable to Parliament.
It doesn't make any sense to think that the only people who have any wisdom about how the criminal law ought to be amended happen to come from one side of the House. Yet we have the Conservatives saying they don't want debate on this to take place on more than one day.
On seven of the last 24 sitting days—seven times—time allocation has been brought in the House of Commons. It's a bit of a serial problem for this government to think that now that we're in a majority Parliament.... I guess they're giving some substance to the cynicism we see out there. We see it from the media from time to time, and we see it in the general public: “Well, you guys can't do anything in opposition, because you're outnumbered.”