Mr. Speaker, the amendment one of my colleagues was trying to move was to make sure that the papers would be tabled in the House no later than February 1.
The reason is that an election in the province of Quebec is happening as we speak and in less than a month there will be a new government chosen to represent the province of Quebec. In this whole issue of federal-provincial relations it is important that the federal government comes clean on what it has as documentation with regard to the Calgary declaration. It is only fair that it does so in a timely fashion so that it can be taken into account by the electorate of the province of Quebec.
The question really lies with what was the federal government's role in the Calgary declaration, what was its position and what type of backroom negotiations, deals, polls and whatnot did it conduct with regard to the declaration. That is what this motion fundamentally speaks to.
There is a will for change in this country. One of my other colleagues mentioned that. The Reform Party obviously has a will for Senate elections. The Bloc has a will with regard to a change in the nature of the relationship between the provinces and the federal government. The NDP wishes to abolish the Senate. The Progressive Conservatives in this House have a will for change with regard to their own leadership.
This really is about consultation and whether or not the federal government has engaged in that and what it has done with regard to that in the Calgary declaration. It is one of the reasons we wanted to see these papers.
The last time this type of thing was done with regard to constitutional papers was with the Charlottetown accord in 1992. The opposition at that time went on a fishing expedition and found a goodly amount of information with regard to what the government was up to on the Charlottetown accord.
As to the issue of transparency, as I said before, in a month there will be a new government in the province of Quebec. We will find out what the people of Quebec decide with regard to their future. If the federal government has nothing to hide, it should be willing within a month to provide the information so that the people in Quebec know what position the federal government was taking in secret and in public with regard to the declaration. This amendment that we were trying to put through was so that the reasonable portion of the time line would be respected.
I have been told that the government should provide these types of documents within 90 days, or three months, call it what you will. I wanted to make sure that the government was held true to that and if we could speed up that process we should endeavour to do so. In that way everyone would know what the federal government was up to on this.