Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member finished his speech, he mentioned how reluctantly the Bloc will be supporting this motion. Unfortunately, we are in the same position here. The Conservatives will also be reluctantly supporting the bill. We have all of the same concerns that have been expressed by the member.
I thank him for confirming the point I made during my speech, that the government is speaking out of both sides of its mouth. The bill is a good example of how the Liberals told us they were interested in serious input, that they were taking the bill to committee before second reading so they could hear our input and make changes, but as soon as it got there they just reverted to the old ways. They tricked us into thinking we would have some input and in fact we had none. When it got to committee, they tried to ram it right through.
The member and I were together during the revision of the Elections Act in 1999 and 2000. I would like him to tell me whether he could see any difference between the way we were treated at that stage to the way we are treated today, with supposedly the new minister getting rid of the democratic deficit. It looked like exactly the same treatment to me. I would be interested to hear if the member feels the same way.
Also, could he tell me whether he believes, as I do, that if the minister had given us the opportunity to give meaningful input, the bill would now be moving much more quickly through the House because we could have made it much better?