Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Before we give consent to this particular request, I would like to make it known that this request was sought not on the floor of the House but in an earlier meeting and it was denied. I hope that by agreeing to this now we would not be setting any precedent or giving the government the impression that this is something we want to do at an earlier point in an emergency debate.
The members on the other side do not have to agree but I am trying to make a point here.
When there is an emergency debate, presumably members of the opposition or others who sought the emergency debate would want to have an opportunity to convince the government members that there is in fact an emergency. In order to do that, we need to have government members on the other side to talk to, which is one of the reasons we did not agree to the autopilot motion earlier. Otherwise we would have been speaking to an empty House all night.
Seeing as the debate is winding down, we agree but without prejudice to agreeing to do this in other circumstances.