Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for helping me explain. I will speak as slowly as I can to give him the opportunity to understand.
To recap, it is the position of the official opposition, and I believe of all members of the opposition, that members of Parliament have a right to vote in this chamber. The Government of Canada has stopped the ability of members of Parliament to vote in this chamber on the issue of Canada potentially going to war. We cannot put a hypothetical motion. We cannot. It would simply be ruled out of order by the people who understand parliamentary procedure between the Table and Chair.
We chose the wording on the same basis as the House leader chooses, and indeed as the finance minister chooses when the budget is brought into the House of Commons. This is what happens. The cabinet brings a motion into the House of Commons with respect to how taxpayers' money is going to be spent, or in the case of the Liberals, squandered. After that there is a vote where members of Parliament have an opportunity to vote to confirm what the government frontbench has done.
It is very clear. I cannot possibly explain or parse all of the sentences in the motion. They are simply there because they have to be there. That much detail is needed in order to comply with parliamentary procedure. The intent of the motion is no different from the intent of other motions or the intent of the budget when they are put before this place. As I pointed out, today's motion is exactly the same as 80 motions of this type that were presented between September 2001 and June 2002.
If our colleague from the Liberals does not understand the idea of putting democracy back into the House of Commons, I say shame on him. If he does not understand how the motion is supposed to work, I would suggest he take advice from the Table just as we and our House leader have.