Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her speech. The member is one of the people with whom I had my first interview when I arrived here in Parliament. We had in fact both just been elected in the last election on June 28, 2004.
I remember some of the things she said, and some of the similar things I said. Since we had not had a minority government for a quarter of a century, we thought that this was a splendid opportunity for this Parliament to work cooperatively together.
There has been cooperation. I am somewhat surprised at the tenor of her speech. She seems to be telling all Canadians, incorrectly, that the government is refusing to compromise because it is refusing to go along with this game proposed in the NDP’s motion. As far as I know, the NDP succeeded in the spring in getting certain budgetary principles across to the government. So there have been compromises in this Parliament. There have also been less positive moments, on the other hand. There have been exchanges in which things have at times been said that are, I hope, regretted.
I have a question to ask my colleague. Is it not true that the compromise that we would like to see here is based not so much on substance as strictly on a question of procedure?
It surprises me that this would come from the NDP, the New Democratic Party. There seems to be a desire to impose on us new rules as far as democracy is concerned, in fact, the way in which a Parliament ends. From what I have always understood—and she may wish to correct me on this—there were two ways to achieve this. The government could decide when the election would be called or, in the case of a minority government, the opposition parties would lose confidence, they would simply declare that they had lost confidence and were leaving.
Is this apparent desire to invent a new procedure not rather an attempt to conceal the fact that, on the NDP side, they want to go to an election, but they lack the courage to do so immediately?