Thank you, Madam Speaker. I point out to anyone watching this debate that the member from the opposite side has just pulled what we would call a sneaky procedural trick while he has accused us of doing that.
What we want to do and what the Liberals are failing to do is to improve legislation. It is totally false for him to imply that we are somehow against the ability of business to do its job. He is saying that we want to prolong and somehow kill this legislation. We want to improve it. We have found from this Liberal government that there is no openness to reasonable amendments. We want to make some amendments, we want to have an allocation of time given to improving this bill before it is put into law.
In the 35th parliament this government used some form of time allocation or closure 35 times. The Liberals do not want debate. They do not want debate in the House and they do not want debate among the Canadian people. Once the Liberals have made up their bullheaded minds they do not want to change their minds. That is giving us legislation that is far less than what it could be.
We have already had seven time allocation motions in this parliament including one earlier this week on the DNA act. We supported the principle of that bill but there were some very important amendments to be made. What reaction did we get from this government? We got “No, we are going to do it our way” and there was a time allocation motion. The government brought all its members in here. They stood and voted for it on command. As a result the bill was jammed through in its present uncorrected form. It is flawed legislation.
Why are the Liberals opposed to having legislation improved? Surely they are not so arrogant as to think that the very first shot at it is the best anybody in Canada can ever do. Why are they not willing to listen to other points of view, those expressed by the Canadian people through the opposition and those expressed by Canadians directly? Why are they insisting on closing down debate? This is really unacceptable.
I would like the member opposite to explain to the Canadian people, not just to me and our party, not just to the opposition, why his party has to resort to these heavy handed tactics in order to jam its legislation through, in its perfect form according to them, when we know it could be improved.