Mr. Speaker, relevant? How about the hon. member shows some class and dignity in this place, and when he is part of a government that has broken a black and white promise, he has the integrity, I believe is the word, to say “We broke the promise” as some Liberals have done and he has yet to do, and apologize for breaking a promise.
If the Liberals are so committed, as they campaigned on and have since championed, to being the defenders of democracy, one of the core principles of democracy is that people run on a platform, which is their commitment to the voters that they will do this thing. That is their mandate.
The mandate does not come from a letter, by the way, scratched out by Gerry Butts or whoever in the Prime Minister's office. That is not a mandate. The mandate comes from one place and one place only, the Canadian people. The Canadian people gave the government a mandate to change the voting system. That was the promise.
All this motion does today, and it is quite simple and I am sure my friend can grab hold of this one, is say that when a party and its members make a promise and when a Prime Minister repeats the promise in the throne speech and hundreds of times since, if it is to mean anything at all, and if any future promises are to hold any weight with Canadians, when that promise is explicitly broken, they admit it, they apologize, and then they work to restore the faith that has been broken.
My question for my friend is this. Why not apologize? Why not do the right thing? Why not admit to what everybody knows, that he and his party broke a sacred promise to Canadians to change the voting system in Canada, full stop?