He just reiterated it. Let the people decide. They can decide whether they want to live in a country where we are protected by our Constitution or in a country where the Constitution can be overturned when decisions handed down by the courts are not to our liking.
One can wonder in what kind of country we would be living if that were the case. I prefer the protection of the Constitution to that of the people who would make arbitrary decisions to overturn a court ruling every time it did not suit them.
That being said, it is not as if the government had not taken its responsibility in regard to election laws. Indeed, I answered questions on the floor of the House at every occasion after that decision was rendered. Then I referred the issue to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, formerly called the committee on procedure and elections. It is the committee which reviews legislation dealing with election laws in this country. Any input that colleagues have can be made there.
Did that member or any other one from his party make a contribution in that regard? Of course not.
This has nothing to do with protecting Canadians. How does what has been proposed today protect anyone? The Alliance produced a motion that is not even votable. That really gives a lot of protection to Canadians, does it not?
This has everything to do with a byelection that will occur next Monday. It has everything to do with it and the hon. member knows it. Even over the last couple of days the Alliance members have been invoking in this line of questioning the name of every offender they have been able to find, with the goriest of scenes from the constituency in question.
We are not crazy. Canadians know perfectly well what the opposition is up to over there. In order not to be ridiculed because the motion is so out of step with reality, the Alliance members deliberately chose not to make it votable in order not to look too foolish at least with the proposition that they have brought before the House.
We all know what that is. I am the leader of the government in the House. Do I know if they have votable supply days left? Of course they have supply days left that are votable. The Alliance members deliberately decided to make this one non-votable, even though they had a votable day left. As a matter of fact they have two votable days left.
It was a deliberate choice on their part. They probably could not even get this motion voted on by the totality of their own caucus, let alone the humiliation that such an extremely worded proposition would have had for the membership of the House.
In summary, we have before us a proposition that says that they want to override the Charter of Rights and Freedoms because it is claimed there is authority to do so and in any event, when there is not authority to do so, then they want to override the Constitution.