Madam Speaker, we have here a government that, in the past, has prorogued this House for purely partisan reasons. Again for purely partisan reasons, it also forced an election when, at the time, the election was supposed to be held on a set date. So then, it should come as no surprise that, for purely partisan reasons, the government is proposing an omnibus bill in place of a budget implementation bill. The government has included many measures that it said nothing about before.
Clearly, the government wants to hide all sorts of things in a bill that the public will not have time to thoroughly examine. That much is clear.
I have a very specific question for the minister of state about what has been hidden in the bill. The Public Appointments Commission was created under the Federal Accountability Act, which was passed by his government. Yet, the budget implementation bill does away with this commission.
In the minister's opinion, does the government no longer need an appointments watchdog, even though one was needed when the Federal Accountability Act came into effect? Given that the government has decided to do away with the commission in this bill, does that mean that the government is now going to be able to appoint whomever it wants to whatever position it wants without any oversight? This matter was not discussed, so the minister can hardly say that it was debated.