Mr. Speaker, I have always wanted to acknowledge the fact that my friend is a graduate of the law school that I went to. However, I am not sure it really helped him a lot in his political career in terms of where he has ended up.
The NDP are in support of this bill and I think he is aware of that. We do have reservations around the minority government situation and the ongoing reservation of the royal prerogative in those circumstances. In particular, our concern is that a prime minister or a cabinet of the day could manipulate, if I can put it that way, the political agenda by way of designating any number of votes as being confidence votes, knowing that at some point they will provoke the combined opposition to vote against a bill.
I wonder if my colleague's government has given any thought to limiting that government power to specified areas, that is, only certain types of bills. I would suggest, because of historical precedence, that these should be money bills and that only money bills should be designated as confidence motions. All others would simply be regular votes and therefore would not provoke or justify the calling of an election if the vote failed against the government.