Mr. Speaker, what a surprise. We have returned from a one-month prorogation and we are yet again debating a closure motion that would shut down debate, something that is at the very heart of our democracy.
I always thought that under our system, the only bills that remained active and were not penalized by prorogation were private members' bills. The government knows very well what it is doing when it prorogues. It knows that with prorogation, any government bills that have not passed die on the Order Paper. We might be more open to this kind of request from the government if we had heard a different throne speech.
Since there was an extra month of no work in the House of Commons, we expected to see some drastically different things to justify the extra month the government imposed before rebooting. We were not expecting to simply lose a month of debate on the bills in question. They want to push these bills through without debate and without acknowledging that there is a price for shutting down the House for over four weeks for absolutely no reason.
Before attacking the other parties, the government should show some humility. It should also show some humility when it shoves everything together and moves omnibus motions to bring legislation back to the floor of the House of Commons.
Holding hostage the committee for abused, missing women—