In closing, I just want to acknowledge something I alluded to in my earlier speech about my passion for democracy, about my loyalty to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and they wrote a quite substantial report on the influence of political parties and the impact of political party control on the exercise of parliamentary mandate. I just want to briefly read a couple of comments from their final observations and conclusion: "The parliamentary free mandate remains a cornerstone of democracy. An MP represents the nation as a whole and should act in accordance with his/her sense of what is right or wrong … Ties between MPs and the constituencies are of a political and not legal nature … Voters may hold MPs accountable only in the context of elections." 