Madam Speaker, I listened with attention and with respect to the Prime Minister. There are certain elements of what he said with which all parties would associate themselves: the pride that we feel in our Olympic success; the pride we feel in the work of our soldiers in Afghanistan and Haiti; and places around the world.
I want to ask the Prime Minister a question of the following order. Could he outline which elements of the throne speech justified shutting down Parliament? He spoke of the necessity of having democratic debate and seemed to ignore that we have to have a place to have democratic debate, namely, this House. Our reading of the 6,000 word Speech from the Throne is that there is nothing new in this. There is nothing that could conceivably justify the prorogation of Parliament.
Would the Prime Minister agree to support our amendment to the address in reply?