Mr. Speaker, my colleague opened his remarks by lamenting this state of committee work. Not a single amendment was allowed to a single piece of legislation in the entire 41st Parliament. That is a record. It must be an unprecedented situation. As I pointed out in my remarks, I have been here during Liberal majorities and minorities as well as Conservative minorities and a majority. We used to get amendments through. If a lone NDP member of a parliamentary committee with very little power brought an idea that had merit, the amendment could succeed, the legislation would be amended. Therefore, the people who I represented were having their voices heard in the democratic process.
This arrogance and idea that not a single amendment should ever be allowed to any bill, even when they are dead wrong, or a former minister of justice humiliates himself by standing up at report stage to move amendments that we tried to move at committee, is an absurd situation. I take no pleasure in that whatsoever.
We have to start objecting to this because the public deserves to know that it is really not a well-functioning democracy. Rather, it is nostalgia for the facsimile of a democracy that we are working under.