Mr. Speaker, the simple question that we should be asking government members is this: was there a need to prorogue? The answer to that question can be found in terms of when the government made the decision to go ahead and prorogue the session and what might have led it to make that decision.
I believe that if the government had said it would prorogue the session but would still come back on September 16, there might have been a lot more validity to the argument for a need to prorogue. It cannot say that it prorogued because it wanted a throne speech, because that was not much of a throne speech. The vast majority of Canadians would recognize that it was not much of a throne speech.
The reality is that the Prime Minister did not want to come back to the House of Commons in September. Coincidentally, he wanted to come back in October, when he would not be around to answer questions on the issue of the day, which is not the European deal but rather the scandal in the Prime Minister's Office.
Therefore, I would ask the member if she could pick up on that particular point. Do we have a Prime Minister who is scared of accountability here in the House of Commons?