We'll deal with them when we get to them, but what we're being told is that we'll only deal with them if we're going to pass a motion that says all will be dealt with today between now and 11:59 p.m. That's what this government is saying.
In that same letter, by the way, it says they have other proposals with respect to adult sentencing that they will forward to us. Well, I haven't seen them yet. Maybe others have, but we can't consider them today if we haven't seen them.
So what this motion is doing, in addition to time allocation, which in and of itself is an attack on democracy—as I said earlier, we're putting the “mock” into democracy, or this government is—is also saying to the Province of Quebec that we're not even going to listen to their proposed amendment. We're not going to consider it, we're not going to allow it to be heard and debated, and we're not going to let the people of Canada who might be watching this on television even know what proposals they have. We're going to change the channel here by tomorrow, because this is going to be reported tomorrow. The government is going to get up in the House and say it has got this far and it is moving its agenda forward, despite the objections of the opposition, who really only want to help criminals. That kind of nonsense--that's what we've heard in the past, and we're likely to hear it again.
But we're here today saying no, we want to see the amendments debated properly, under proper consideration, given the time it takes to do that. We want to have a full opportunity to do that, to consider these amendments, to consider what suggestions might be forthcoming again, from the Province of Quebec as well, and to have a proper and fulsome debate and consideration, and to ask questions of our expert witnesses, whose time we've taken up by having them sit here listening to this for the last three or four hours, perhaps unnecessarily. It's five hours, I'm told. Yes, this is getting on to five hours now. It's five hours since the government decided we will not move to clause-by-clause consideration of the bill unless there's a motion passed to limit that to consideration only today, between now and midnight tonight.
I don't know what the magic of 11:59 is. They must think the chair is a miracle worker, that all of a sudden you can pass a whole bunch of motions between 11:59 and 12 o'clock. I don't know. You're supposed to put all questions serially or severally, or something, according to the motion. It doesn't seem to make sense to me, but the clear intention—