Supply  Mr. Speaker, this has been an extremely important issue for communities throughout Canada for 30 years now. I will be sharing my time with the member for Nanaimo—Cowichan. Both of us, like the majority of the NDP caucus, wanted to take part in today's debate, because it is an extremely important one.

Supply  Mr. Speaker, I do not see quorum in the House. And the count having been taken:

Budget Implementation Act, 2005  Madam Speaker, the member referred, I thought somewhat derogatorily, to a Baptist minister from Saskatchewan who recently, with Canadians from coast to coast to coast, was voted the greatest Canadian of all time, bar none. After the most extensive voting process in Canada's history, people chose Tommy Douglas as the greatest Canadian of all time.

Budget Implementation Act, 2005  Madam Speaker, as I rise to speak on the budget bill I wish to congratulate Carole James, who is the leader of the B.C. New Democratic Party, for her tremendous breakthrough yesterday with over 40% of the vote in British Columbia. I would also like to congratulate the new member of the legislative assembly for New Westminster, Mr.

Committees of the House  Is that how you guys ran the Airbus agreement?

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, we need to proceed very quickly on this. The recommendation on the commission of inquiry is to strike it immediately and give it a mandate to investigate the avian flu outbreak. The problem is that the CFIA has gone off into its little corner and done its own review without getting public input from the people who were most seriously impacted and involved.

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, I am the one smiling now. It is funny to see any member of the government, which has not acted on anything of importance to Canadians over the last 12 years, standing up and saying that what the government is really trying to do by shutting down the agriculture committee report and the call for a public inquiry is to take action or, as we say en français, noyer le poisson.

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, I know that being a British Columbian you understand the importance of the issue and I appreciate your willingness to hear my comments. It is very clear to me that members of the government do not think British Columbia is important and obviously do not think agricultural producers are important either.

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, this is unbelievable, really unbelievable. We have moved forward a concurrence motion on a report that comes from the agriculture committee and which very clearly talks about the need for action. Members in three corners of the House have moved this concurrence motion forward because of the importance of the issue and the importance of action, but what we are seeing again, in an appallingly abusive way, is the Liberal government trying to shut down action on an issue that cost British Columbia, to take the farm gate receipts and the secondary economic impact, nearly $400 million, nearly half a billion dollars.

Gasoline Prices  Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak to motion M-165 by the member for Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou. This motion calls for the creation of a petroleum monitoring agency and amending the Competition Act so that the Competition Commissioner would have the power to launch investigations, summon witnesses and ensure confidentiality.

Wal-Mart  Mr. Speaker, recent revelations about the former head of Wal-Mart's U.S. operations have indicated that he used improper methods to finance secret anti-union activities. This is not the first time Wal-Mart has done this. In the U.S., the management of Wal-Mart is paying $11 million in fines after using illegal immigrants to clean its stores.

Agriculture  Mr. Speaker, it is about time the government did something for B.C. It has been 13 years. There is mounting evidence and concern that the United States has been hiding its cases of mad cow while keeping its border closed to Canadian beef. These concerns have been raised by the U.S. department of agriculture inspectors themselves.

Budget Implementation Act, 2005  Mr. Speaker, the hon. member talked about an ideal world. It is very clear that the ideal world is an ivory tower right now within the Liberal caucus. We are talking about $5 billion that was given out to the corporate sector to reduce even further the corporation tax rates, and they are already much lower than in the United States.

Budget Implementation Act, 2005  Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the member for Windsor West and I appreciate the opportunity to speak to Bill C-43, the budget implementation bill. I would like to start by flagging what is obvious to all of us. The games that were being played around this budget implementation bill have certainly changed in the few weeks since it was introduced.

Budget Implementation Act, 2005  Mr. Speaker, clearly it is not a budget of hope; it is a budget of despair and it creates an economy of despair. When we look across the country, we see homelessness numbers growing day by day. We see increasing child poverty which is shameful after 12 years of Liberal government.