Madam Speaker, I do believe that the time the House of Commons and the Senate of Canada are in session is precious time. I believe that all members of Parliament have a responsibility to try to use that time to the best of their abilities on the issues of great importance to Canadians.
As I laid out in my remarks, I believe those paramount issues right now to be the security of jobs, the security of Canadians, safety, the security of our men and women in our armed forces as they toil overseas, and we could go down a long list of all the important issues.
I do not believe for a second that Canadians are seized with the issue of prorogation. I laid that out in my remarks.
What really annoys me the most about the fact that we are debating, wasting Canadians' and Parliament's time today, wasting this time on a motion like this, what really annoys me about the issue of the hypocrisy of each one of those parties as they have laid out their support for trying to impose a change on the government about prorogation is that we have heard nothing in the past of all the instances of their own parties.
One of the most flagrant uses of prorogation was when former prime minister Jean Chrétien shut down Parliament when he was going to turn over the leadership to his successor, Paul Martin. He shut down Parliament to avoid the Auditor General's incoming report about the sponsorship scandal. Everybody remembers that.
Did we hear one word from any one of those parties about the abuse of Parliament in its being shut down to avoid the personal responsibility of the sitting prime minister over the sponsorship scandal? We heard not one word, and yet we put up with this nonsense here today.