Mr. Speaker, I am glad the hon. member made my point quite eloquently with the case of Mr. Waddell. Mr. Waddell's right to vote was violated. Last Wednesday the rights of not just one MP were violated, but the rights of every member of parliament were violated in that we could not vote. That is the problem. I am glad the member realizes that.
I will make another point. That member and many members of the House in this debate are out of step with the public. The public is our boss. The fact is this parliament has become the purview of the Prime Minister's office. Taxpayer money, the money the public gives to this House and to this institution, is being used by the Prime Minister's Office for its own gain.
I am making a plea. Oliver Cromwell in Great Britain asked for the removal of the mace. Oliver Cromwell said: “Take away that bauble, ye are no longer a parliament”. He did that because at that time Great Britain did not have a parliament. There were no public servants. There were no people working for the public good. Members of parliament were operating for their own good.
We do not have an institution here where members of parliament are operating for their own benefit. We have a Prime Minister's Office that is operating this House like a dictatorship. That is the fundamental problem we have.
I make a plea to every member of parliament in the House to have the guts and the courage to stand up for democracy, to stand up for the rights of their constituents, to stand up for their own rights and to vote against the government's efforts to censure me, not because I did not do anything wrong, because I did. I picked up the Mace and it was premeditated.
All hon. members should vote for the amendment and against the government's proposal. In doing so every member of parliament will say to the Prime Minister's Office that we are not taking it any more, that we have had it with this lack of democracy, that we have had it with this dictatorship and that we will move forward and build this institution by Canadians, for Canadians forever.