Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this bill. Since I spoke to the motion regarding the disposition of the bill yesterday, there have been some developments. However, I do want to take this opportunity to add some points which I did not have time to do yesterday, given the 10-minute limit.
I would like to focus on the democracy argument.
In terms of the Canadian democracy, we have an executive branch, which is the Prime Minister and the cabinet, which essentially, on a day-to-day basis, runs the government. The job of the Parliament of Canada and the members of Parliament who are not sworn into cabinet is to keep the executive branch in check. The executive is supposed to report to somebody. It is not a dictatorship. Yet, what we have here is a circumstance where the executive branch of government is attempting to circumvent the democratic process by invoking closure on a bill that is not urgent by anybody's definition of urgency.
The Conservatives had the opportunity last fall, with respect to Bill C-21, to approve Liberal amendments in the justice committee which would have eliminated the one-sixth accelerated parole review. This would have prevented Mr. Lacroix from being released, which is the reason we are here today, because of the public outcry about it. It would have prevented Mr. Lacroix, if they had voted for it, from being released. However, the Bloc and the Conservatives voted to defeat those amendments in the fall of 2010. Now, because of the public outcry over the release of Mr. Lacroix, we are here in an undemocratic environment with the executive branch of Canada's government attempting to stop Parliament from asking questions and from getting the information that is required. Those pieces of information that would be eliminated are important.
I am on the public safety committee and I have the notice for tonight's meeting. Because of the closure motion, the bill will be voted on this afternoon. Everybody knows that the bill will pass, because the Conservatives and the Bloc have teamed up. The Conservatives like to use the word “coalition”, so I will use it. They have teamed up to form a coalition on this piece of legislation to stop the democratic process.
It is not the first time either. In the past, the Conservatives attempted to reach a coalition deal with the Bloc to defeat the Martin government. They run their ads about coalitions. It is hypocritical for them to do that. Canadians should know this is something they have attempted to do before and they are doing it now with the Bloc. They are circumventing the democratic process.
In terms of the information that we must have, we need to know the costs that are involved. We will be asking for the costs.