Madam Speaker, they can call it what they will, but it is games. It is political theatre. It is to prevent legislation from being ultimately debated and passed.
On the one hand, the Conservatives say they want more debate time, but when the government brought in Motion No. 11 to give them just that, what did they do? They voted against it. On the government benches, like many Canadians from coast to coast to coast, we work past 6:30 in the evening, so we were saying, “Let us have more debate time in the evenings.” The Conservatives said no. They want more debate time, but they just do not want to work late.
They say they want more debate time on government legislation, but when the government brings forward legislation, what do they do? They try to adjourn debate on the legislation. Heck, they will try to adjourn the proceedings of the day. They want to go home early. Sometimes, they will move that another member of their own caucus be heard so they can cause the bells to ring and they do not actually have to debate. Go figure the silliness that comes from the Conservative Party of Canada today. Instead of having a debate on the legislation that the Conservatives are saying they want to have more debate on, they bring in concurrence motions, which prevents hours of debate. When it comes to opposition days, do they ever bring in concurrence motions? No, because they want their debate time on their agenda.
The Conservative Party is not doing what it was given to do in the last federal election. The responsibility of being the official opposition does not mean it has to be a destructive force, and that is what we are witnessing: a destructive force content on character assassination. That is the Conservatives' focus, and it really is quite unfortunate because there is so much more they can be doing, even as an official opposition.
They do not have to agree with everything we are doing. They can critique. They can be as critical as they want on a wide variety of policy issues. The New Democrats will support us through critical votes, but they are also some of our greatest critics because they understand the role that they were provided in the last federal election. I only hope that more and more of the Conservatives would come to the realization that they have more of a role to play than providing destructive character assassinations in the House of Commons today.