Mr. Speaker, I reject the premise of the question. To the contrary, many of the bills which have been the subject of time allocation in this Parliament were subject to enormous amounts of debate in the previous Parliament. One of the reasons Canadians elected a government with a stable majority mandate is that they were tired of important public priorities being endlessly stalled by pointless opposition filibusters.
I have been in the opposition. It is absolutely legitimate for opposition members on certain matters to express their dismay through such tactics as a filibuster on occasion. The problem is that in the previous Parliament and in this Parliament we have seen that kind of tactic used by opposition parties, especially the official opposition, to an extreme. Therefore, a platform commitment that Canadians have voted for, such as these efforts to combat human smuggling, would never be passed into law. They would never become law. We would never keep our commitment to Canadians. We would never have the legislative tools we need to stop human traffickers from targeting Canada were it not for the judicious use of the time allocation tool available through the Standing Orders.