Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my Liberal colleague for his two questions. As an aside before answering the question on parliamentary democracy, I would like to say that it was in fact the Liberal Party that signed on to the Kyoto protocol and its objectives. The then Liberal government signed an agreement that recommended a progressive decrease of greenhouse gases. At the end of their mandate, we ended up with a substantial increase in greenhouse gases. That party is just as responsible for what is happening to the environment.
As far as democracy is concerned, my colleague is right. This Prime Minister constantly says that it is important to give a voice to parliamentarians, the publicly elected members. And yet the first thing he does, on the issue of Afghanistan for example, is hand the whole thing over to a panel, by using Liberal gimmicks, since the former Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Manley, is now chairing this working group. I think it is a gimmick in an attempt to trick the political parties. He should have handed this over to parliamentarians. That is what we are here for. We are here to assess the situation, but we are not being given the opportunity to do so.
What is more, there are many other situations in which the Prime Minister is going back on his word to give more power to parliamentarians than to lobby groups.
My colleague is right. This Prime Minister is renouncing parliamentary democracy.