When my colleague speaks of a threat to democracy, when debate on 21% of the bills introduced in this House end in time allocation, we are entitled to ask where the government is headed with this.
The ratio of time allocation to bills receiving royal assent was 1.3% under Trudeau, 6.3% in his third mandate, 16% under the Conservative Prime Minister and 11% under Trudeau-Turner at the time. How many times was time allocation invoked under the Liberals in the last session? We are not talking about 1%, 3% or 6% but 30%. Thirty per cent of bills passed by this House were subject to time allocation.
Seriously, how can citizens be expected to respect the work we do in the House? How can they be expected to respect members who are fresh from an election campaign and have promised to review a bill which has such a negative impact on Quebecers and Canadians?
How can they be expected to take seriously a government that promised right and left that it would sort out the employment insurance issue and that said it had not done so before the election because the Bloc Quebecois had blocked the bill, when in fact it was introduced just before the end of the session?
How can members of the public be expected to respect a government that allows only one day of debate so that it can officially get its hands on $30 billion belonging to them? How can we be expected to respect a parliament in which 30% of the bills passed were subject to time allocation? How can we talk about democracy when the primary objective of the government opposite is to prevent members on this side of the House from expressing their views on something as fundamental as employment insurance?
I too ask the Chair to keep a critical eye on the government's behaviour in the future. It is too late now, because, once again, we have just voted. The government brought in a time allocation motion. We will no longer be able to debate employment insurance in the House because after one day the government has decided that it has heard enough.
This is a disgrace. I am asking the Chair to try to remind the government that it is engaged in an extremely dangerous exercise, which consists in gradually eliminating what is left of the democratic process in parliament.
The government is not only arrogant because of its strong majority, it also no longer tolerates, in a debate like this one, the diverging views expressed by the opposition. Electronic voting will soon be introduced in the House. Perhaps the whips will rise to vote on behalf of members of parliament. We will become mere pawns in this place and we will no longer be allowed to talk or to vote. We will no longer be able to remind the government that it made promises to people and that it is not fulfilling them.
I want to tell the government House leader that Quebecers will remember that, during the election campaign, the government promised to tone down the provisions of the Employment Insurance Act. Quebecers will remember that the House leader and his government took steps to ensure that the real issues would not be debated and solved, and that they have given official sanction to their holdup of the employment insurance fund. This is unacceptable.