Mr. Speaker, the logic of the question and the premise are completely lost on me because that is not what I am saying at all. I am saying if it is to be a level playing field we cannot have one side represented and the other side not represented. Within my remarks the House will find a reference to the fact that it was the students who first put forward the premise that perhaps there should be no lawyers involved.
I am guilty of being a lawyer and I do not for a moment suggest that the process cannot work without the presence of lawyers. What the process cannot do, if it is to be equitable, if it is to be fair, is stack one counsel table with trained legal minds and not the other. As the member for Charlesbourg indicated, members of the bar in Vancouver who have extensive legal experience as counsel are sitting at one table and the students are sitting on the other side of the room, at an empty counsel table, unable to articulate themselves in the same way and with the same vigorous legal training as on the government side. It is absolutely perverse to suggest otherwise. To stand here and defend the indefensible is further proof that the members of the backbench of that party are becoming nothing more than whipped dogs.