Mr. Speaker, I consulted with my constituents quite at length over the last three or four days at a town hall meeting in my riding. There were a few questions that emerged, which I would like the member to address if he could.
Also, we have been conducting an online poll over the last 48 hours. It is interesting that the polling results have been running 70% of people urging me to vote against the motion tonight and roughly 30% asking me to vote for the motion. We are getting about a thousand people ever few hours voting online.
I know Internet polls are notoriously unreliable. It is, however, an indication of where Canadians perhaps are on this issue. In the town hall meeting in my riding, people voted by a ratio of 30:1, asking me to vote against this particular motion.
I will pass along to the hon. member the questions my constituents have asked and perhaps he could answer them.
First, what is a nation? In the context of this motion it is rather ill-defined as to whether we are talking about a population group, an ethnic group, a culture group, a geographic group or a civil government. What would be the member's response to a definition of a nation as contained in the motion?
Second, why the rush? This is a very salient point. People want time to debate and understand exactly what is going on and right now people feel that they do not have that. They would like to know why the House is rushing to a decision in two hour's time and how are we possibly going to deal with something so fundamental in that period of time.
Third, what are the consequences? Do we know if there will be consequences in the long term?
I think our friends from the Bloc Québécois are rather happy that we are about to pass the motion in the House. They obviously are one step further along the road to sovereignty when the Parliament of Canada declares that the Québécois are a nation within Quebec. I can understand completely why they would support that.
Would the hon. member answer my constituents, please, frankly and without platitudes and drop the speaking notes? Could answer those three questions?