Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague, the member for Burnaby South, for a really excellent speech and for putting this apparently esoteric discussion into something of a historical frame so people who watch these debates will understand just how important it is.
Charles I, as the executive, lost his head over this very topic, and here we have a government that seems to think, as the executive, that it has the ability to ram through changes unilaterally. The government got 39.5% of the vote and believes that gives it the mandate to change the rules of the House.
He talked of the fused legislature and executive in our parliamentary system and how they think, as an executive, they can impose their will on this place. I would like the member to speculate on how that might have been done if the government wanted to make changes to another branch of the government, such as the judiciary. Would that have been acceptable?
Could he enlighten us with the experience he had when he made his changes to the parliamentary rules to bring in electronic petitions and how that compares with how the present government is choosing to proceed in this instance?