Madam Speaker, I appreciate the comments from my colleague, the House leader for the Conservative Party. I could not agree with him more.
We only have to look at the work done in the last Parliament by the environment committee, chaired by a person I do not always agree with, but an expert on his side of the environment issue. I think he had a little over 300 and some amendments in that committee. The committee worked extremely hard to put together amendments to a bill that was drastically flawed.
However, when the bill came back at report stage, only 120 of those amendments were left. The government saw fit to change them. We know why the government wants to control these things.
In reality, it should be parliamentarians that work with the government. The government brings in legislation, but until we get to the stage where members of Parliament cannot vote against that legislation without the fear of defeating their government or embarrassing it, what is the purpose of legislation? The minister takes it back and rejigs it with his bureaucrats to the way the majority of members of Parliament want it and that becomes the law of Canada.
The Charlottetown accord is a great example. We would have had a Constitution that the majority of Canadians did not want. We had a referendum so we do not have it. This is a similar thing. Let us select chairmen by secret ballot. Let us have committees that work better and we will all be better off in the House of Commons.