I am being heckled by the Tories, Mr. Speaker. I do not understand it, but it is all right, I feel better.
The Liberal who raised this point has a problem with time and space. There is a chronology here. We are creating the possibility here today of not having a Christmas election. That is the choice before the member today. Of course, if the Liberals were to do the right thing, they would say, “Fair enough. We want to get the first ministers and first nations conference over. We want to get these four or five pieces of legislation through. We want to get to the supplementary estimates. We want to go to the WTO and the Kyoto conference and everything else. So we are going to accept the NDP compromise”.
It is not just the NDP compromise anymore. It is a compromise that was reached because the Leader of the Opposition and the leader of the Bloc Québécois were willing to come together and see what could be done in the interests of all these things that the Liberals say they are interested in. But, no, oh no, says the hon. member. I am a little surprised by him. I guess he just cannot suppress this sort of partisan behaviour. Normally he is a thoughtful enough person, thoughtful enough that he would not try to stand up and defend the government on this because he does not defend the government on everything.
Instead we have this false choice being put before the Canadian people. If the government does not accept this motion today, if the Liberals vote this down next Monday when the vote takes place on this motion, they are the ones who will be precipitating a Christmas election. Those are the two choices: what is before us today or a Christmas election.
As for the idea of allowing the Prime Minister to simply do whatever he wants, even though he has the constitutional right to do that and I do not dispute that, we have constitutional rights to do all kinds of things in this country. But there is such a thing as consultation, respecting Parliament and trying to see what would be in the best interests of the country. I am sorry, but does the Constitution trump all those things? I think not.