Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for a question that will enable me to elaborate on how we see things.
Usually, when Parliament prorogues, all the bills die on the Order Paper and the government must come up with a new legislative agenda. That is the very reason for proroguing.
We accept that view, but we propose that only as an exception should a number of bills, over which the government and the opposition parties would agree, be maintained. The government should do some consulting, rather than trying to forcefully bring back all the bills. Let us look at a list of bills from the last session. Which ones does the government want to bring back? Which ones does the official opposition want to bring back? Which ones does the third party want to bring back? Let us make a list of all the bills for which there is a consensus.
If the government absolutely wants to bring back a piece of legislation for which there is no consensus, it should come before the House and say: "We are asking the House to take this bill back under consideration". Then a debate would take place. The UI bill is an excellent example. If we agreed that Bill C-111 should be brought back before the House, it would be much more democratic, much more elegant for the government to table a proposal to the effect that it wishes that Bill C-111 be maintained, even if this may involve a few amendments. Then the House would debate the relevance of such a proposal. In this way, Quebecers and Canadians
would see very clearly who, between the government and the opposition, takes into account the opinions expressed through consultations, as well as the mood prevailing across the country.
We are not asking that the opposition be the one to decide. However, there has to be some kind of an agreement on that issue. Right now, the government is acting like someone who wants to buy a new car, while also wanting to keep the best things from the old one. This is not logical. There is no continuity in the government's action. The government should take into account the logic in these arguments. It should at least accept the amendment tabled by the Bloc, or the idea of some agreement or negotiation between the parties regarding a list of bills from the previous session. It should not adopt the view that all the bills should be brought back. That would defeat the purpose of proroguing, while also significantly reducing the importance of the speech from the throne. And if the speech from the throne becomes meaningless because all the bills from the previous session can simply be brought back, the government itself will have drastically reduced the impact of its new agenda.