Mr. Speaker, the member for Winnipeg North very often makes it difficult to dignify his comments with a response, but I am going to make an exception in this case and respond to what he said, because I just think it is factually way off base.
First of all, I do not think he even realized that I moved an amendment initially, but if he did and had he been listening to what I was saying, he would know that the amendment is actually trying to establish an offer to the government to make the amendment by the Conservatives more palatable to the government.
That is a negotiation. I am not saying that there are not good ideas coming from various places in this debate, but the idea of moving the amendment was to actually try to make an offer so that we could all come to an agreement on the later sittings.
The principle of that offer is simple. It is just to say the business that comes from the opposition should not be accorded any less importance or value than the business coming from the government. That is not unreasonable.
The member will recall that many times throughout this session the NDP has proposed unanimous consent motions to move bills through many stages at once in an effort to help expedite the passage of legislation by the government. If the member, who apparently spends a lot of time in the House but not necessarily paying attention, would go back and consult the Debates, he would see that the NDP has been making many attempts on various pieces of legislation to try to expedite the passage of the government's legislation. In fact, in some cases we are more responsible for the success of the government's legislation than the government itself.
I would repeat again in this House the fact that the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley made an offer to the Minister of Democratic Institutions on how to move forward with Bill C-76 in a fair and timely way and allow Canadians to contribute to that conversation, but the offer was not even dignified with a response from the minister.
The Liberals say they want to work with us, but when we write to them with a proposal on how to work together, they do not even get back to us.