Mr. Speaker, very quickly because I had no idea that my colleagues from the Bloc and the Alliance were going to go on at such great length about matters having nothing to do with Bill C-35 and I would certainly urge the Chair in the future to perhaps pay more attention to the rules of relevance that are buried somewhere in the standing orders. I do not have time to critique the entire Canadian Alliance white paper on defence that was read into the record on something having to do with military judges, or many of the other things that were said, but I want to complain first of all about the process.
This bill was introduced on Thursday last week and here we are debating it on Monday. I do not think this is appropriate. Parties have not even had time to caucus. It is not that this is a particularly controversial bill, but it has happened a couple of times now where things have been introduced at the end of a week and we have debated them on the following Monday or Tuesday. I do not think that is appropriate. There is certainly no sense of urgency with respect to this particular bill. I do not understand why the government wants to operate in this particular way.
At the level of appearances, it would appear that this is a housekeeping bill. It embodies a principle having to do with remuneration of military judges. It goes some way toward encouraging judicial independence. These are all things of which we are in favour, so I did not rise to speak against the bill. Certainly we want to see it get to committee and probably have a very quick look at it.
The process is the thing I really want to complain about here. I certainly could have used this particular time to make a speech about why we are opposed to the national missile defence system and about various other things that are happening on the other side having to do with defence. We are getting mixed messages from the Liberal front bench not just about nuclear missile defence but about a whole number of other things.
Perhaps the reason this bill was brought forward so quickly is that this is the only thing on which the Liberals can agree when it comes to something having to do with defence. This is the one thing on which they could agree so they thought they would put this down so that they could actually get up and create some kind of facade of unity when it comes to these kinds of issues.
I wish, for instance, we could see this kind of expeditiousness and efficiency when it comes to replacing the Sea Kings. What the Liberals can do in three days when it comes to remunerating judges they cannot do in 10 years when it comes to replacing helicopters. What is more important?
