Recently, we had a situation where we had to deal with close to 500 amendments. If I am not mistaken, there were 471, but these amendments concerned a bill that had hundreds of pages.
Now, we are faced with the threat of 1,000 amendments to a bill that is one and a half page long. Those who set the rules of this House—and it is not I, but those who came before me—of this Canadian parliamentary democracy opted for the British model, never intended, of course, for you, me or this House, that the purpose of the report stage of a bill would be to stop the legislative process. That was definitely not the intention of those who made these rules.
By creating such situations, we tax the system in this place to the point where parliament is totally paralysed, and we have to live with the result. The result, according to members opposite—and I cannot even know if the allegation is true or false—is that those who support you are so overburdened by the excess work that, according to the accusers, they are unable to do justice to the Chair regarding this issue.
I do not agree with their analysis, but let us not forget the root cause of what is going on in this parliament. What is going on is that some members want to prevent parliament from legislating, by resorting to tools that do not even exist. Those who want to do that are, in my opinion, doing something totally unacceptable. When I say this, I am not imputing any motives.