Madam Speaker, the heckling is getting a little heavy over there. I guess some ministers have come to the realization that this is bad legislation and they do not want to hear about it. That is pretty clear. The fact that government members are not allowed to speak to the bill demonstrates that the government does not want to hear opposition to the legislation which has been shot down twice before.
In my opening comments I connected this group of amendments to the Challenger jet purchase. I will continue to do so because it has to do with arrogance. It is arrogance that prompts the Prime Minister and other ministers in the cabinet to buy executive jets when our military is short of equipment of all types and does not have enough people to do the job it has taken on and will continue to take on.
The same arrogance allows the government to prevent its own members from speaking to Bill C-5. Lots of them want to speak to the legislation. Many Liberal members in the House do not support it. They recognize that it is bad legislation. Arrogance is so ingrained in the government that it has become a huge problem.
I heard the Liberal vice chair of the environment committee on CBC radio a couple of weeks ago on the show The House . She talked about what had gone on at committee. She talked about some of the amendments in Group No. 4 and how they had been changed. I did not entirely like the product the committee came up with but it did its work. It was good work by and large. What the committee came up with was much better than what the government has put forward. The vice chair of the committee said on national radio that she was upset and disgusted with her own government because it had ignored months of hard work by the committee. The government completely ignored the work of all members of the committee. It threw it aside and put in place what the minister and cabinet wanted.
That is a problem of arrogance. The government no longer cares what the public wants. It thinks it can go on indefinitely without having to worry about the public. That is the sad truth. It is the level the Liberal government has come to.
I can understand why the minister and hon. members opposite want to shut me down through heckling. They do not want to hear this stuff. However it is a fact. Not only opposition members are saying this. Government members are saying it.
People across the country who expect their MPs to speak on their behalf must be wondering where the speakers are from the governing party. They are not here today. They have not been here for the past few days. They will not be here over the next few days--