Mr. Speaker, a pretzel I am not. The motion calls for and confirms the opinion of the House. My friend says that it should be defeated by reason of its novelty. I would disagree with that. It is clearly a compromise motion that brings forward the majority opinion of the House that the government does not have confidence and it specifies an election date that is in the best interest of our community. Nothing could more rational than that.
My friend acknowledged the importance of Blackstone who is one of the great parliamentary legal scholars. The part to which I am about to refer was written some 231 years ago, shortly before the establishment of the very first democracy in British North America in 1758 in Nova Scotia. I think the logic of what was said at that time applies to this very day because what we are talking about here is not legality. We are not talking about detailed rules and procedures. We are talking about the concept of respect among the different orders of government, the executive branch and the legislative branch. We are talking about the constitutional traditions that keep our government system strong which are being abrogated as we speak by a government that does not have the confidence of the House.
Blackstone stated:
Thus every branch of our civil policy supports and is supported, regulates and is regulated, by the rest; for the two houses naturally drawing in two directions of opposite interest, and the prerogative in another still different from them both, they mutually keep each other from exceeding their proper limits--
--which is what the government is doing, exceeding its proper limits.
--while the whole is prevented from separation, and artificially connected together by the mixed nature of the crown, which is a part of the legislative, and the sole executive magistrate. Like three distinct powers in mechanics, they jointly impel the machine of government in a direction different from what either, acting by themselves, would have done; but at the same time in a direction partaking of each, and formed out of all; a direction which constitutes the true line of the liberty and happiness of the community.
Some of that language is difficult to understand but at the end of the day the language speaks to the fact that the liberty and happiness of our system of government only works if there is respect by the executive branch for this Parliament, and that is what we do not see from the Liberals.