Madam Speaker, here we are in the final 20 minutes of debate on the bill under closure. It is absolutely outrageous that we are facing closure again in the House.
All through the last parliament we had closure, closure, closure. The Liberal government has set a record for closure. In the last parliament alone it moved closure more times than in the entire Mulroney period prior to the Liberals. We thought that was an outrageous record, but this government has demonstrated itself to be totally incapable of understanding the principles of democracy.
Here we are in the last 20 minutes of debate on an important bill. When we look at the schedule through to June we have February, March, April, May and June. We have five months in which to be talking about important bills like this one, bills that Canadians are interested in.
And what is happening? The government is moving closure on a very controversial bill. When we look at the schedule we must ask ourselves what is the rush. Over the next four months there is nothing but a litany of boring, inconsequential, insignificant and irrelevant nonsense on the schedule of what we have to debate over the next few months. It is boring.
For the people in the real world it is boring and frustrating. When they look at the schedule that is coming down the pike, they wonder why we are not talking about the Young Offenders Act, which they have been pleading with us for 20 years to do something about. What are we doing? We are moving closure on an important bill and moving to boring insignificant stuff.
They ask us why are you not talking, for goodness sake, about the immigration and refugee problems we have in this country. We cannot talk about that because, amazing but true, Liberals think that immigrants to this country should not have to speak one of the official languages. They are quite happy for anybody to come here. They support the recommendations in the report that say that international agencies overseas should pick our refugees for us and send them here, even if they are incapable of settling here.
When we look at things like this and the people in the real world outside, the voters of Canada, want us to be debating these things, what is happening? We are having our time cut short. We are moving on to things that are technical in nature, technical bills, boring bills, insignificant bills.
The speaker before me from the NDP mentioned that the Reform Party believes in referenda and enacting the will of the people, and we do. There was a plebiscite run for the farmers in connection with this bill, not directly related but indirectly related, but it was flawed in many ways. First of all, it was a plebiscite, not a true referendum, and it had a carefully engineered question. There was no discussion about how that should be organized.
It really gave the barley farmers, who were the only ones involved, an all or nothing option. It reminded me of that advertisement on television right now where the man comes into the office and says tell me about RRSPs, and the adviser says yes, just put your head here between the vice and I will tighten it a little. That was exactly what was happening to those barley farmers. They had their heads put in a vice where they had no option but to give the answer that the government wanted them to give. When we look at Bill C-4, we have to ask what is the rush.
No wonder the Liberals did not want to write property rights into the charter of rights and freedoms, because when you look at what they are doing in this bill, they are preventing people from selling their own property on a free market. What sort of way is that for a civilized country to conduct itself?