Mr. Speaker, the minister indicates he feels the bill is constitutional, but his is pretty much a lone voice among those with legal training who testified before committee.
What we know is that the Supreme Court has given Parliament until December 20 to act, if it decides to do so. That is the timeline. We have three months, and we are looking at limiting debate to two days. A pre-study has already commenced in the Senate. Senator Linda Frum indicated she does not expect to see any amendments at the Senate. All of the amendments at committee, save one that was proposed by the official opposition, were rejected. The bill already appears to be on a fast track.
Given that there are still three months before there will be a gap, have there been any meaningful efforts to come to an agreement with respect to a fair amount of time to debate the bill? If not, does it not seem a bit heavy-handed to take the debate down to two days when there are three months to deal with a complex social problem on which the Canadian public is extremely divided? We learned that from a $175,000 poll which was withheld from the justice committee until the hearings were done.
Canadians care about this. Canadians are divided on this, yet it seems as though, unless the minister can tell me otherwise, there has been no real attempt to come up with a fair amount of time for debate. Rather, a heavy-handed measure is being taken here.