Madam Speaker, I could probably give 10 reasons but I will give the member three because I know my time is short.
This is a democracy ruled by the people. How are people supposed to express their rulership, their decision making, if their elected representatives have no voice, if their elected representatives cannot express their will? Democracy is what we are trying to supposedly preserve in these parts of the world, but we are not practising it here because there is no vote. One reason there should be a vote is to express our commitment in this country to true democratic principles. Let the people speak.
The second reason we should have a vote is if the government is to commit the resources, human lives and well-being of the country, it should have a mandate to do so and not just some executive decision by cabinet behind closed doors into its own members do not have any input, never mind the rest of the House. The mandate should say that the people, the legislators and the elected representatives are behind what the government will do. In that way we would know there is a commitment. We would be much stronger because we would be together. It would not be just a few people deciding what is going on and other people asking what is going on and why it is going on. We would have talked about it. We would know what the plan is and would have made a wilful decision to support it, which I think would be what all of us would desire to do.
The third reason we need a vote is that in order to have a vote we must have a real debate, not this mushy motion that I read, not these nice words but some real specifics. If we are voting we have to know what we are voting on. We cannot just take notice that things are happening. We have to ask what we are voting on, what we are trying to achieve and how we will achieve it.
These are the kinds of things I talked about in my speech to which I hope the hon. member was listening. We need to have a vote. It would make members demand the facts and address their minds to the facts. I think that would be healthy, proper and appropriate.