Mr. Speaker, I keep struggling with this issue, because it seems some folks have still not yet grasped our rules. Of course, time allocation is not used by this government to shut down debate, because here we are debating, which we will be doing tomorrow, Monday, and Tuesday. It is used as a scheduling device so that all members of this House can have certainty and confidence about when the debate will occur, and more importantly, about when the vote will occur and when the decision will ultimately be made. That is very important.
This is reflected in Beauchesne's at page 162. I have referred to this point before, but the opposition House leader seems not to have grasped it yet. It is at paragraph 533:
Time allocation is a device for planning the use of time during the various stages of consideration of a bill rather than bringing the debate to an immediate conclusion.
There we have it in black and white, from one of those important green books that we rely on that tells us what the rules are.
There was an interesting observation today from one of the more knowledgeable observers of parliamentary procedure, who said this:
...the...bill will get a total of five days of second reading debate, which is pretty reasonable.
We have provided for ample debate, more debate than has often happened on many bills of this type historically, and I am very pleased to see that we are doing it in a fashion that allows full debate, but more importantly, lets decisions get made. That is what is important: that we make decisions, get things done, and do the job that people sent us here to do.