Mr. Speaker, next year at this time when the government is history, it will still go into the history books for two sad records. The first will be for having had more pieces of its legislation rejected by the courts than any other government in our nation's history. Half a dozen times now courts have said that its legislation is badly botched work and have thrown it back to the Conservatives. The second, perhaps even more important, is the sad record of having some 84 time allocation and closure motions. That has never been seen before in Canadian history.
There has never been such a lack of respect for parliamentary debate and dialogue, with the results that I have mentioned earlier, of more bills being rejected than of any other government.
The questions really are why this bill and why now? First, despite the laudable principle in creating the bill, it undermines the National Parks Act. Obviously the government wants to hide that fact from the Canadian public, which is why it is shutting down debate.
Second, why now, why this morning? Of course, we have Bill C-586 that the member for Wellington—Halton Hills has brought forward, and there were five witnesses scheduled to speak at the procedure and House affairs committee: Samara Canada, Fair Vote Canada, Friends of the Reform Act, Democracy Act, and Professor Nelson Wiseman, all wanting to speak on reform and to get their message across.
Obviously the House leader disagrees, so the real question is, why are the Conservatives trying to disrupt the procedure and House affairs committee and trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the Canadian public on Bill C-40?