Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on the issue of collaboration. “Collaboration” is a word we have heard bandied back and forth. It seems to me a basic truth that the way power works is that when power is dispersed, co-operation and collaboration become necessary, because if power is dispersed, people have to work together in order to achieve some result.
The committee I am on, the human resources committee, has adopted eight reports in the last year. It has been an extremely productive committee. I know there are many other committees that have undertaken important studies and gotten a lot of work done, and have done so through collaboration that is forced by parliamentary committees that reflect the reality that Canadians voted for, which is dispersed power through a minority government.
If the government takes an undemocratic supermajority on committees, that means that collaboration is much less likely to happen, because the power would be centralized in the government and there would be no pressure on it to collaborate. There is more collaboration in the present than there would be if the motion were to go forward.