It was not bike weather. The member got that right. In the 35th parliament which started on January 17, 1994, 37 times the government closed off debate with 32 time allocation motions and 5 closure motions. It is unbelievable.
In the 36th parliament, which is still ongoing and seems longer all the time because we watch them in operation and it is thoroughly amazing, 30 times already the Liberals have brought in closure on various motions: 29 time allocation motions and 1 closure motion. That is why we have a record setting event here today on this report stage to which I am speaking. It is hard to believe.
I do not think any one of them should be proud of it. I do not think any one of them is proud of it but they can explain it away so well. The Ottawa 67s, here they are right across the way: 67 times with 61 time allocation motions and 6 closure motions.
They would have all kinds of reasons, I am sure. They would have all kinds of reasons about how hard it is to govern and how they need to get all this magnificent legislation through. Some of it has been pretty thin gruel, as you have noticed, Mr. Speaker, because you sit in that chair for some hours at a time, thinking to yourself, I bet, what does this have to do with the nation's business. Precious little. He is seized of the issue. Yet there it is. It is all so important they just have to ram it through.
Some of it probably need not be brought forward in the first place. Some of the big legislation we have to deal with in this place gets short shrift. With 67 times these Liberals even outshoot and outscore the Mulroney Tories for closing off debate. They never thought they would hear that. I am sure they did not, but they are there. They are the record holder now.
I like Mark McGwire's record myself a whole lot better. There is a champ who knows how to hit a home run. He is supposed to hit home runs. That is what he gets paid for.
Government does not get paid to stifle debate and ram things through. The Mulroney Tory reign in power commenced on November 5, 1984 and ended September 8, 1993, approximately nine years. The Liberals under the Prime Minister came to power on January 17, 1994. They reached their 67th use of time allocation and time restriction on May 16, 2000, today. What a sad day for democracy. As I recall that bunch of people used to go pretty ballistic. I was here.
I would like to read a few quotes which are really precious. Let us go back to Mackenzie King. He was the longest serving Liberal prime minister. He said in the 1930s that closure was, “The most coercive and arbitrary act of which a government is capable”. Imagine. Something has changed between then and now. He was a Liberal prime minister too. Is that not something. He said that it was the most coercive and arbitrary act of which a government was capable.
If given the chance the government members would leap to their feet and say that things have changed, that things are different now and they know what they are doing, that Mackenzie King had it easy. I do not think Mackenzie King had a really great time in government in the 1930s. Those were not happy times in our country. Yet it is okay now.
In a speech given by Mr. Stanley Knowles against the use of closure, he referred to former Liberal minister Frank Oliver's statements on the subject when he said, “Closure is not a blow at the rights of the Canadian people. When closure is imposed in this way by the moving of a motion that is out of order, it is a blow that strikes at the very heart of our democratic system”. Those were carefully chosen words. That was a Liberal who said in 1956 that closure was not a blow at the rights of the Canadian people, it is a blow at the very heart of the democratic system.
Of course, the government members would say that things are different now too and that it is not closure. I love that little argument. They say it is not closure, that it is time allocation. Not one person in the House, even the Liberals when the day comes when they are in the opposition, could be convinced that there is a big fat difference between time allocation and closure. It is semantics. It makes a precious argument and it looks good in the scrum. But they will never convince me or anybody else across the country that there is any major difference between closure and time allocation.
No matter what the logistics of it are, the end run is always the same. The government stifles debate in the House. When I first came here I thought this was the house of debate. Yet whatever it is, it does not suit the Liberals' purposes and they want to ram it through so they use time allocation or closure. It really makes no difference what we call it.
Let me go to another one. This is the member for Ottawa West in 1989. For goodness sake, she is here to hear it. I am sure she will confirm it. Talking about Mulroney, she said, “This government has shown it has no respect for the public process, no respect for parliament and no respect for the opinions of the public”.
Here she is today being dubbed as one of the Ottawa 67s. In government it is so much easier. It is fine when they are in government to ram it through.