Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague even more for raising this issue than the previous issue. It is absolutely absurd to claim that having a debate on a bill would be useless simply because the opposition is likely to vote against it. To take that reasoning a little further, why do we not just shut down the House of Commons tomorrow and be done with it? We could play a recording that simply repeats, “Canadians gave our government a strong mandate for the economy” and we could all go do something else. If we take that reasoning a little further, Canadian parliamentary life would look a little like what I just described.
In the House of Commons on November 25th, 2011. See this statement in context.