This is what the government House leader stated with respect to closure:
—I am shocked—. This is just terrible. This time we are talking about a major piece of legislation—. Shame on those Tories across the way.
This was on November 16, 1992 in the House.
The member for Kingston and the Islands, the Deputy Speaker, stated “What we have here is an absolute scandal in terms of the government's unwillingness to listen to the representatives of the people in this House. Never before have we had a government so reluctant to engage in public discussion on the bills brought before this House”. That was a government member.
Since the government has come into power we have had 40 time allocation motions and 3 closure motions. This is a disgrace. We are all elected to the House. All 301 including the Speaker represent Canadians from coast to coast. We all have a right to have our voices heard in the House.
Once again we see the government shutting down the process the minute those members get a bit squeamish or uncomfortable about anything, whether firing the minister of fisheries, trying to close the lid on government documents, not releasing them to committees, or bringing forward closure. It goes on and on and on.
That is the point I wanted to make with respect to closure and I want to leave some time for other members. We have very limited time in this debate. It is an absolute disgrace that the tactic the government uses is to shut down the debate every opportunity it can, the minute those members are a bit uncomfortable. I think they should be ashamed of themselves.