Madam Speaker, we live in a monarchy, so that comes with certain stipulations. I think that there is no better example of this than what happened in late 2020, when the committee had to study an agreement with the United Kingdom without having received the text of that agreement. I remember it well. We heard from witnesses, representatives from businesses, organizations and institutes, who were talking about what they recommended or did not recommend, what they would like to see more of and what they hoped to get. At one point, I raised my hand and asked them whether they had seen the agreement, because I had not. I told them that it seemed as though they were basing their comments on something they had seen, whereas I had not seen anything. They all told me that, no, they had not seen the agreement.
I think nothing illustrates the fact that we are in a Parliament with rather serious shortcomings more than when we see that we have policies but no firm law requiring a deadline, and that those policies are not being respected, as we see today with 15 days instead of 21 days. It is all well and good for the government to mention on the website that there is a treaty policy. It is all very well for the Liberals to puff out their chests and say that we have been democratic since 2008. The fact remains that we are never consulted beforehand. There is never any debate beforehand. We have also noticed that, instead of adopting agreements, we adopt bills that are only a few pages long. We cannot really change or amend anything. When we look at the history of Canada, we see that, initially, there were a few monitoring mechanisms and annual reporting obligations, but little by little they have all been abandoned over time. I think we simply have a parliamentary monarchy that is heavy on monarchy and light on parliament.