Madam Speaker, I spoke at some length on this last week in the House. I would refer the hon. member to Hansard if he wanted an answer in any great detail as to what we found wrong with the motion.
I do not think these circumstances should cause us to throw away our normal practice. Good procedural arguments are still in order even under the circumstances which prevail now. One of the things I found wrong with the motion was that it called upon us to accept in principle a piece of legislation, that is to say the legislation in the United Kingdom, which we did not have before us.
Our procedure is that at second reading debate, which is a debate in principle, we have the legislation before us. The Alliance was asking us to accept something in principle that we did not even have before us. I found that particularly objectionable on procedural grounds.
There may well be things in the list with which we agree and other things about which we have concerns, but the fact of the matter is that it was presented in a way which was open to the charge of political grandstanding. That is a charge which could have been ameliorated over the course of the day if the Alliance members had been willing to accept the repeated requests by members of the House to refer the subject matter to a committee so that today the justice committee could be meeting to talk about it. But no, it was their way or the highway.
The Alliance has to take responsibility for the fact that there is, at the moment at least, no process in train for a House of Commons committee to look at the matters that it said were of such serious importance. I agree they are of importance. That is why we and others sought to get the matter referred to committee.