Mr. Speaker, it is my intention in the three minutes that I have to prove the odiousness of the situation this government is forcing upon us in the House of Commons.
It has just forced us into something unacceptable, closure on closure. Here we are debating a motion whose aim is essentially to reduce the role of the opposition in this House and to prevent us from tabling amendments to bills under consideration, as we have done in the past.
And so, after three hours of debate on this important issue—the amendment of the standing orders, a change in the balance of the parliamentary powers of the two sides of this House—the government invokes closure. Three hours of debate on a matter of such importance, a change to the standing orders, and the government decides we have talked too much.
How else should we understand this approach other than to assume that the government is now on a very slippery slope? Not only are we seeing the government's arrogance following the election, an election no one could justify holding in any case, in a sort of mandate the government has drawn for itself from the public to support all of its initiatives, not only have we had over the past few days meaningless responses during oral question period, but now we do not even have any ministers present in the House to answer questions.
I have only one minute left, but how can I say in the space of one minute how awful a situation the government has put us in?
The government does not want to debate any more. It is refusing to debate with the opposition. It sees itself as the calm centre of truth. It refuses to remove its blinders to see what the people we represent want. It has decided to impose closure in the most awful way possible, that is, by forcing us to play a partisan role and rule on the merits of the amendments we put forward.
I would invite you, Mr. Speaker, to turn your attention first and foremost to the 200 amendments the government itself has put forward in respect of its own bill on young offenders. Perhaps you will find some of them useless.