Mr. Speaker, if we thought we might take some liberties while you are in the chair, it is only because we know you are so capable and can handle it so well.
I am going to resist the temptation to get into substantive debate on the bills that the House leader mentioned in her speech and instead ask about the motion.
We know that the government has some legislation that it has not passed yet. It actually does not have very much legislation at all, but it wants to get the balance of the legislation passed before summer. Part of that is because of the government's ineptitude. It is because the Liberals refused to honour a long-standing parliamentary tradition of seeking all-party consensus before making changes to the Standing Orders. Their failure to honour that principle cost them a lot of time in the House, but that was their decision, not ours. They had another problem, interestingly, on a bill that had to do with preventing genetic discrimination, which was that they had over 40 members of their caucus vote against them. It created a bit of a disciplinary problem, because they can maybe kick one person out of their caucus, but they cannot kick over 40 out of their caucus.
This motion is not just going to put increased strain on opposition members; it is also going to make the Liberal backbench pay for the ineptitude of cabinet, who, by refusing to acknowledge that simple principle of parliamentary tradition, wasted time in the House and did not get the Liberals' legislation through, and now they are asking their backbench to modify their schedules to spend more time away from their family when the government has professed a commitment to a family-friendly Parliament.
Could the minister tell us if this is really the Liberals trying to kill two birds with one stone? Are they trying to get legislation through that earlier they could not, because they were refusing a long-standing parliamentary principle, and also trying to punish over 40 members of their caucus for not toeing the line on other bills? The seals are going to clap anyway, and the ones who are going to be really disappointed and frustrated are the 40 members who voted against that bill.