Mr. Speaker, it is recognized in a democracy that major decisions must be made within a legal framework.
I would ask the hon. member to give me one example of a major collective decision made in a democracy outside a legal framework.
Since we are referring to Mr. Ryan, here is what he wrote on May 27 of last year: “The federal government will feel compelled, as it did in 1980 and 1995—even though this was not sufficiently pointed out—to refuse to promise ahead of time to recognize a result obtained through an equivocal question. It would be useless to try to deny the federal government this power to reserve comment”. I could not agree more.