Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's tone and the way he conducts himself as an hon. member. I do not want to go over what happened yesterday. It happened right here in front of me. We saw what happened. We have talked about what happened, but I want to talk about Motion No. 6 in regard to what we are discussing today.
We have what we call Standing Orders, which are here to protect parliamentarians. They are here to protect democracy within Parliament. The government in a tit-for-tat felt it almost lost a vote, so it came in with Motion No. 6. The motion starts this way, “That, notwithstanding any Standing Order” in other words, those things that protect Parliament, the rules of Parliament. Then it lists 17 things, (a) to (q), that would take away the power of the opposition to hold the government to account.
The Minister of Health said here today that they are here to advance the issues of Canadians, so is the opposition. However, the government has said it knows what is best so it will handcuff the opposition and ramrod through what it thinks the issues of Canadians are.
The first thing the Liberals said is that “on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, the House shall continue to sit beyond the ordinary hour of daily adjournment until such time as a Minister of the Crown or a Parliamentary Secretary moves a motion for the adjournment of the House”. In other words, we just stay and debate until the Liberals decide, and they will not tell us when. Then at two or three o'clock in the morning, they can simply say that now we are going to go to another debate and the opposition had better get its speakers ready at three or four o'clock in the morning.
That is the kind of government we have here. It is trying to take away all of our powers. Could the member who just spoke stand and tell us how Motion No. 6 is taking away from the decorum in the House, or is it adding to decorum in the House? Is it poking the opposition, poking Parliament, and poking Canadians in the eye as far as us being able to hold the government to account?