It was only appropriate that David Christopherson, in those final hours of debate, rose in the House of Commons to rail against a piece of legislation the scuttling of which he has devoted so much time and so much breath and so much of his loud, ringing voice to.

Indignant and dramatic, standing at his desk, he held a copy of the Fair Elections Act in the air.

“There is probably this much of the bill that nobody but nobody who does not have a Conservative membership card got a say in because there was no consultation ahead of time,” he said, practically shouting, with a section of more than half of the bill between the fingers of his right hand.

“It was not reviewed at committee,” he said, “and we cannot review it now because this debate is being shut down.”

“Therefore, this part here,” he declared, indicating the smaller sectioned off part of the bill in his hands, “at the very least, is pure Conservative Party documentation, because nobody else has had a chance to look at it due to the Conservatives shutting down debate.”

“That alone should worry people, that there is so much shutting down of debate on a fair elections act!”

Christopherson, the NDP member for Hamilton Centre and the party’s deputy leader, was the master of high dudgeon on the procedure and House affairs committee as it studied the controversial Bill C-23. He spent hours and hours and hours at committee filibustering, as a protest against the government’s refusal to take the bill on the road and hold cross-country consultations, and is known for his mighty rants. He certainly would have stood in the House for longer if that were possible.

It’s a sore spot for Christopherson and his NDP C-23 team that the committee didn’t have as much time to look at each amendment and debate each clause, as they felt necessary. At 5 p.m on the first day of May, the hammer dropped and the committee was forced to simply vote on each amendment quickly, amendment after amendment, to conclude within about an hour.

The government later moved time allocation on the final hours of debate in the House.

There’s no illusion, Christopherson continued in the House of Commons as the clock ticked, that Conservative Senators will do anything but support the bill when it heads to the “other place.”

“There is no democracy there, there is no democracy here!” he said with a theatrical flourish. “There is no fairness there, there is no fairness here!”

“We will continue with every breath that we have and every vote that we have to try to stop this bill and amendment to its very end, which is coming very quickly.”

“Make no mistake,” he said. “Canadians know that this is a bill that is meant to help the Conservatives get re-elected, not make our democracy stronger. The NDP will stand up for a proper and fair elections process every day.”

And they did stand up – they all did – every member of the House of Commons stood up Tuesday evening to vote on a bill that’s so detested by the opposition and so lauded by the government.

Christopherson’s dream of putting a stop to the Fair Elections Act wasn’t to be – it passed 146 votes to 123, with all Conservative members voting in favour.

After MPs voted, the minister for democratic reform spoke very briefly to reporters in the foyer outside the House of Commons.

“The House of Commons just passed the Fair Elections Act, a bill based on common sense, filled with reasonable proposals like requiring people to show ID before they vote, keeping big money out of politics and giving Canadians an extra day on which they can vote,” Poilievre said in front of cameras and microphones and reporters.

Asked about the very contentious parts of the Fair Elections Act that got dropped through government amendments, Poilievre said, like he has so many times before, that the bill they introduced was a “common sense bill.”

“We listened carefully to all the witness testimony and accepted the amendments that were worthy of passage,” he said, in the same practised tone he deployed throughout the debate.

“And I think the final result is a bill that started off very good and is now in an excellent form as it heads to the Senate.”

The opposition will continue to call it a bad bill, and a flawed process. The government will continue to call it terrific.

To be fair – after serious pushing in the House and at committee, after witness testimony and public pressure, and the likes of Sheila Fraser and Preston Manning raising real concerns – the government’s surprise amendments made a flawed bill not perfect, but a lot less flawed, by eliminating provisions that would have put an end to voter vouching and totally muzzled the chief electoral officer.

Tuesday night, the chair of the House affairs committee, Tory MP Joe Preston, finally had a chance to share how he feels about the bill. Preston, a jolly, friendly character, had led PROC through its study of the bill with a smile.

It was a great bill to begin with, he said in the House, and made better with the amendments proposed and passed.

He gave a hat tip to the NDP team – Alexandrine Latendresse, who spent her 30th birthday at committee during clause-by-clause, Craig Scott, the party’s democratic reform critic, and Christopherson, whose voice Preston said still rings in his ears. As the committee rushed through considering the bill, there were long hours and late nights – many late nights to get to the end of those MPs’ Fair Elections Act fight.

All the while, as Preston spoke, Christopherson sat at his desk in the House chamber, pursing his lips, tapping a pen in his hands and looking, as he often does, very unimpressed with the government.