Mr. Speaker, something I have admitted publicly before, that I got quite wrong in terms of my thinking when the current government moved from a minority to a majority position, was how the tone and tenor of the debate would be and how legislation would be dealt with. I assumed that with a majority and the confidence of being able to pass legislation, that confidence would then lead to a certain amount of willingness to discuss amendments and work on legislation because at no point in a majority government, unless there is a serious crisis, can the government fall.
Minority governments are naturally quite skittish, and that is understood, and there is a lot of parlaying that has to happen between the parties. I have been wrong and disappointed so many times at committee. It is not that we put forward an amendment and the majority members of the government on the committee say it is wrong because of x, they just vote against it. Then they vote against the next one and the next one and the next one, until we have gone through all of the amendments and they are all gone. That is not necessarily the best way to do things and I sometimes search for the reason for that. Why bother? Who cares, if an amendment gets through, who the source was?
In fact, one might argue, strategically, it would better bond and tie the opposition to the legislation being moved through if we made amendments to it. I have seen legislation, as have you, Mr. Speaker, that has moved through the House and when the opposition starts to feel a certain need to vote against it, the government says the opposition got 10 amendments and they changed this, that and the other. Bill C-15, the military justice act, is a good example. There was a long battle and a certain amount of arrogance that was going on until a fundamental amendment was accepted and, lo and behold, look at what happened. We got a better bill, not according to us but the people it is going to affect: the military. That is good, that is better, that is what Parliament is meant to do. There has been too much of this bellicose attitude.
Hope springs eternal, as my friend, the government House leader, said earlier, and the hope is that we find that common ground a little more often, rather than the constant dismissal and arrogance of saying that the answers to the questions we face can only come from one side.