We already do. The Prime Minister was in China. I do not know what Liberal members think about it, but I was incensed when it was reported that he said he would like to have stone statues in parliament because they could stand up and vote. He could set the statues in place of the chairs and they would be standing all the time. He thinks that would be a good thing.
If I were a Liberal member of parliament and my leader said that I probably would not criticize him publicly, but I would take him aside and ask him if that was really the way he felt about me. If that is the way he feels I would wonder why I joined his party, why I ran under this platform and label, and why I even came here. According to his philosophy of parliament I would be totally useless. That is how I would respond, and I would talk to him privately about that.
I suggest that the government's approach to legislating is a disgrace. It cuts back the time the House is available to sit and then it applies closure to cut off the debate.
I do not know if anyone in the House has noticed, but the government has very seldom invoked closure. Instead, it uses the clause in the standing orders called time allocation.
I suppose that in the House just as the Canadian flag is a prop so too are the standing orders. I have to keep them hidden but I have the standing orders on time allocation and closure. Mr. Speaker, you are very familiar with them, but perhaps some of the thousands of listeners out there in CPAC world are not. I will give a very brief description on the difference between closure and time allocation and why the government has chosen time allocation over and above closure about 99% of the time. I think we may have had a couple of closures, but it has almost always been time allocation.
The difference between time allocation and closure is simply that under closure, the motion is that the House do not adjourn until the debate collapses. That is basically it. We have in the House 301 members of parliament. Under closure, theoretically, members could stand up one after the other and keep on talking and we could debate. Instead of standing up and voting during all hours of the night, to the next morning, to the next noon, to the next evening and right through the night, we could actually be debating at those times. That is what closure is as I understand it.
What is time allocation? Time allocation says that no more than one sitting day be allocated, and that is it.