Mr. Speaker, I listened to some of the remarks here and, with respect, there are a few things wrong with the picture that the MP presents.
First of all, if he is the defender of this issue, which he says he is, and no doubt he feels strongly about it, why was he unable to convince his colleagues on his side of the House to make that the subject of an opposition day?
I have to wonder why he had to bootleg it on the tail end of a day in which we are supposed to be discussing improving the rules of Parliament and hijack the orders of the day in order to replace it with this.
Another member asked earlier today, what procedure was used? We were not born yesterday. The hon. member parked a motion on the order paper to move concurrence in a committee report and then moved it on a government day when we were discussing a more cooperative spirit in this House to improve the rules.
There is something wrong with the sincerity across the way here. Either that or there is a total lack of knowledge of the rules of this place, how they are supposed to work, and how they are supposed to make them better.
What we have and what we should have is the debate that we all said we would have today in improving the House rules, not a hijacked process. If this issue is serious, as the hon. member says it is, he should have made it an order of his party by using one of its supply days instead of hijacking the process and the reason why the rest of us came to debate something totally different today.