Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend, the member for Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame for his remarks. He was doing pretty good there for a while, and then he got into a couple of rough bumps.
I know time is tight on these questions and answers, but there are a couple of things that absolutely scream out to be responded to. The first is, the member talked about the McGrath report and holds it up as something they want to do. In that report, they talk about how proud they are of the fact that they did not have to have any votes. The member says they are not saying that there have to be votes, though I am not really sure. It depends on what part of his speech we are referring to, as he kind of bounces around.
Here is the reality. There is no open, give-and-take, free discussion, as we would all like to have, if the government insists on retaining the right to ram it through if it does not agree with the proposed unanimity. This is the issue. The government keeps saying it does not know why the opposition is doing this, why it is causing such turmoil. By the way, they were the ones who forced it 24-7, not us. They wonder why we cannot have a nice discussion, why we cannot just talk about these things.
Let me ask the hon. member this question. If he were prepared to guarantee that there would be no ramming through, under no condition would the government believe it had the right to ram something through, would he accept that then we could have a fair and informed discussion? He must recognize that as long as the government retains the right, or believes that it retains the right to unilaterally ram it through, the idea of having nice, equal, fair-minded discussions is just not going to happen, for obvious reasons.