Mr. Speaker, I would not go so far as to say that this is the worst government we have ever seen, if we are going back through Canada's entire history, because I have only been a member a Parliament for the last sixteen and a half years. I was merely commenting in comparison to the Chrétien government and the Harper government.
I think the behaviour in the House in general has been gradually improving over that time. I do not mean that the government is better here. I am talking about the actual practice of decorum in the House. I think that has improved.
The easiest story in the world for a reporter to write is how things are so much worse than they were in the golden age of, and then they name something that is just receding over the horizon, such as the golden Trudeau versus Mulroney years. The golden age has always just disappeared over the horizon. I do not agree with that. I think the opposite is true. That is not to the credit of the Prime Minister. It is to the credit of all of us, in particular the new crops of MPs we had in 2011 and 2015.
With regard to prorogation, I will make the following observation. The prorogation of the House in 2008 to avoid a non-confidence vote was indeed very unusual. The test of a political convention is this: how do the Canadian people respond in the next election? Conventions are not enforced by the courts. They are enforced by popular will, as expressed in an election.
The House was prorogued for a while. The House came back in early 2009. The other parties, the Liberals in particular, said they would defeat the Conservatives if they did not follow the new plan. However, they did not defeat the Conservative government. They could have at that point defeated the government. They did not do so, because they realized they would lose an election under those conditions, which makes the point that the convention actually shifted to accept those circumstances. Although it was at that point unprecedented, it is in fact a practice that has defined what the convention is vis-à-vis prorogation.
There was a second prorogation that was actually more controversial. I have a feeling that it may be the one the hon. member was referring to. I would have to think about how I feel about that prorogation. The one she mentioned I think was entirely conventional. In fact, it was a definitive conventional prorogation because of its outcome.