Mr. Speaker, last Thursday during a meeting with his constituents, the member for Kootenay—Columbia offered Canadians a sobering glimpse into the life of a Conservative backbencher.
He described how Conservative MPs were powerless to stand up for their constituents and admitted that he could not explain the details of the Conservative's Trojan Horse budget bill.
I remember a time when Conservatives allowed dissent, a time when that Prime Minister promised to give backbenchers a real voice, back in the forgotten days when they claimed to stand for the grassroots and believed in democratic reform.
Now the Conservative PMO silences dissenting voices—not just scientists and the media, but even their own members. Last week's heavy-handed overreaction by the PMO is bad for Canadian democracy.
How can Canadians trust that this Prime Minister will listen to their concerns when he is not even willing to listen to the concerns of his own MPs?