Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Prime Minister a question.
As I recall, in 2005, the current Prime Minister stated:
I remind the House that the motion was nonetheless adopted and that the government is duty bound to respect the decisions made by the House of Commons....the Liberal controlled and Liberal majority Senate found yet another way to delay it...
I would like to discuss the bill I introduced, Bill C-232 to amend the Supreme Court Act. The House of Commons, by a majority vote, decided to support my Bill C-232 to amend the Supreme Court Act. Now the bill is before the Senate, where the Conservative government nearly has a majority. It does not quite have it, because the independents can shift the balance one way or the other.
My question for the government is this: will the government ask Conservative senators to refer Bill C-232 to committee for further study, or will the senators delay things, as was done in 2005 when the current Prime Minister, who was Leader of the Opposition at the time, said that Liberal senators were delaying a bill?
Would the Conservatives be in the same position? This government said that it wanted to be transparent and wanted to change things. It said that it disagreed with having the Senate vote on bills from elected members of the House of Commons. In this case, elected members passed Bill C-232 to amend the Supreme Court Act. Will the Prime Minister order or tell his senators, who support him 300%, that the elected members of the House of Commons made a decision and that he would like Bill C-232 to be studied in committee and things to go as they should?
Otherwise, that goes against what he believes in, or what he wanted to make people believe when he was in opposition. He claimed to be opposed to the Senate voting on bills from elected members of the House, but now that he nearly has a majority and the system works in his favour, we no longer hear him talking about that.
Will the government order or ask the Conservative senators to send Bill C-232, an Act to amend the Supreme Court Act, to committee to be studied?