I would like to thank the hon. member for voting for me earlier so I could continue this speech.
Just so the public knows, there are procedural things that can be done on that side of the House to make difficult the opposition's job of pointing errors or omissions in bills, things that should be improved on, amendments, consideration for the public, raised public awareness; all those things that we are supposed to do on this side of the House are disallowed when that side of the House says that there can only be one day of debate per bill.
So far the government has a perfect record. There have been two bills in the House and both bills have had restrictions on debate for this side of the House to even speak on the issue. There is something wrong with its idea of democracy when it says it is one bill and shove it through the House. They do not understand that the role of the opposition is to critique a bill, to try to improve a bill and to improve public awareness. It is a whole gamut of jobs given to us by the Canadian public to do.
When that side of the House says we cannot do it what are we supposed to do? We have to try to resort to procedural games ourselves. What a ridiculous thing they force us to do.
That side of the House should sit down and negotiate the number of speakers we have left, what day we are going to bring in the bill, how long it will go through the House, we can go back and forth because we want to make sure you get your business done. But we have a job to do on this side of the House to do all those things I listed earlier.
If the government feels compelled to use procedural shenanigans on every single bill, and it has a 100% track record so far, this is going to be a long four years. Canadians gave this party a job to do. They gave the other parties jobs to do as well. Those jobs are to hold the government's feet to the fire, to make it accountable, to propose amendments in order to help it design better legislation and to raise public awareness; all those things that all of us on this side of the House have been elected to do. There are almost as many of us on this side of the House as there are on that side.
In other words, one day soon there will be a vote that this government is going to be awfully close to losing. There are going to be many votes, some of them unfortunately without negotiation, without notice and without any negotiation between what I hope are hon. ladies and gentlemen all around. We will have to resort to the last resort which is to start out with the standing orders, then with Beauchesne's and then start duking it out on the procedural side. What a shame. We should be debating and voting on the issues of the day and trying to build a better country with this House of Commons. When we are not allowed to do that, then this party and many others on this side of the House will not stand down. We will rise to the challenge. We will not let the government ram this stuff through.
If the Liberals think they have won the day on this, let them remember that there is yet to come committee work, report stage, third reading. The idea of co-operation which makes this House work well will instead become confrontation. What a shame.