Mr. Speaker, as I stated yesterday in the House, I, as well as the member, am concerned about the fact that the Prime Minister has stated on many occasions that he is prepared to call a vote on confidence on quite a few matters, in some ways even threatening Parliament to defeat the government on a bill so that he could go before the electorate.
I find this type of behaviour undermines the very essence of what we are trying to accomplish with Bill C-16. If the Prime Minister really is serious about a fixed date election and about making sure this bill is workable and has wide support from all of us in the House, then the Prime Minister must, I believe, stop this tactic of constantly threatening an election every time the polls seem to go up for the Prime Minister. I share my colleague's sentiment.
As for the second part of her question on the NDP amendment, I have not seen it but I certainly am interested in looking at it, because we should do anything we can to in fact tighten that prerogative, as it might be called, to call an election on any whim and waste $300 million of taxpayers' money. Canadians should not be having elections every year, as seems to have been the case in the last two minority parliaments. We should do whatever we can to make sure that we are taking good care of taxpayers' money and we should not call an election whenever we deem it should be the case. I am interested in looking at the amendment and welcome the opportunity to do so.