Mr. Speaker, every one of us in this room was elected to represent our constituents, and we were elected to be members of Parliament in a parliamentary democracy. A parliamentary democracy does not shut down debate so other points of view are not heard.
I heard from my colleague earlier that this budget was debated last March. Many of us were not in the House last March.
The budget is actually bigger than many telephone books in many of our small towns around the country, and yet the debate is being limited so that we cannot shine light on what is in the budget.
If the debate were allowed to proceed, the government would get to paint a glorious picture of what it thinks it is doing, and we, as the opposition, would get to comment on what is good and what is lacking in that budget.
Surely, parliamentary democracy requires time for parliamentarians to debate. The government cannot start behaving as if we were living in an autocracy.
My question is, will the government allow the opposition to debate this without time constraints?