Mr. Speaker, I will comment a bit on the hon. member's speech, especially when he says that all we have to do is stand and be counted and parliament will be turned on its ear, that all we have to do as parliamentarians is stand and say the magic word and things will change.
If we had just stood I suppose the government would not have brought in time allocation and closure on debate 75 times. I suppose, to use the member's words, we could fix the committee structure by simply standing and saying that we wish we could have a proper chair of committees without interference by the government.
I would like to question him on that subject since he raised it. Last spring I put forward proposals called “Building Trust”, a dozen specific proposals on helping parliament fix itself. We put together this year a proposal about reforming the entire parliamentary system, including things like estimates, committees, how we deal with things, endorsing all party committees, reports on how we deal with budget allocations, estimates and so on.
What more exactly does he think we could do? It needs fixing but we cannot fix it from here. We need help from the leadership group on that side of the House or enough backbenchers with enough spine to help us. We are putting forward the proposals. We do not have the votes to carry them.