I see Jeff is back already. I do not know where Mutt is but Jeff is back carrying on with his routine without his partner.
A short time ago I asked for unanimous consent to delete Standing Orders 78 and 57. There was a great scurrying of little furry feet and other types too, I suppose. They came scurrying out from points beyond shouting: "No, no, no. We cannot have that".
For those Canadians watching the debate what I was asking for in the request for unanimous consent to delete Standing Orders 78 and 57 should have pleased the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands. I was asking for them to cancel the motion to invoke closure. The Liberals say the Reform Party is getting wound up about nothing, that we are not even prepared to raise enough speakers to carry this on anyway. Then why did they object to our asking for them to withdraw closure? Because they know that part of what we were talking about was the democracy of this House.
It seems kind of silly for us to stand up and be railed on by these people about the fact that we are concerned about the democratic process in this House. The democratic process in this House suggested the hon. member can take time along with everyone else.
Of course now the Liberals have put their feet in it. The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands has stated that the debate will collapse, that we will not keep it going. Of course now he has backed himself into a corner. He cannot stand up and talk because he himself would be carrying the debate beyond the point which the Liberals predicted it would fall.
There is no point in carrying on debate when the Liberals do not listen, when they try to turn our words. We feel we are making our point and our point is very clear. The Liberals turn each piece of information that comes to this House. They twist it and try to present it to the public in a very questionable manner. That was done when they started suggesting it is a worse offence to ask Canadians for their opinion than it is to ask our soldiers to swear allegiance to someone other than the government they serve.
Why did we table this motion? We tabled this motion because Canadians all across the country asked for this type of action. Long before this issue came up I found myself in the unenviable position of responding to constituents who asked: "Why has the Bloc not been charged with treason? How can we possibly have a Parliament where we use our tax dollars to bring people into this Canadian house of democracy to preach and rail against the country that is paying their way? Their former leader has taken his Canadian pension and gone back to promote separation from within". How can I explain to these people that because we are democratic we allow people-