Finance committee  Right. You could argue that basically everything the government does involves spending of some kind. But actually, it's—

Finance committee  Right, which clearly isn't what I intended. I apologize for that.

Finance committee  It's in part by giving proper voice to all these pieces of legislation. I don't think you're then going to see as many filibusters as you are with, say, an omnibus piece of legislation. So it's about working with the parties in ways that we don't currently do, bringing more colla

Finance committee  I think at the end of the day you are going to face those instances. But if you can honestly look at yourself and say, “I've fully represented all of my constituents' views in this piece of legislation”, then you've probably done your job well. I don't think that—

Finance committee  But to the best of your abilities, you need to represent your constituents, and I understand that. I don't think that anyone, to the best of their abilities, could represent their constituents when there's a 500-page bill that affects virtually every aspect of Canadian society. T

Finance committee  You do have a legitimate point. By saying “government spending”, I think it's fairly clear what I meant. I think most parties can agree—and by “parties”, I use that term generally, not in regard to political parties—that there shouldn't be large amounts of legislation that.... Ma

Finance committee  Thank you, Chair. I'll quickly respond on the Auditor General's oversight, as I've looked into that more than the other oversight. The issue is that there's going to be a reduction in what they're able to do and in the oversight they're able to employ. That's only part of the

Finance committee  I didn't hear the question.

Finance committee  Not recently that I can think of, but to be honest with you, omnibus legislation isn't necessarily a matter of partisanship. All individuals from all parties can come together and understand the difficulties with omnibus legislation. It really doesn't have anything to do with par

Finance committee  No, I haven't read anything that expressly says that they support omnibus legislation at all really.

Finance committee  Yes, there are a lot of similarities with the omnibus legislation and a lot of other legislation that goes on throughout the world in many democracies, the U.S. included. As you said, it tends to encompass a large number of changes into one thing in order to have it all move thro

Finance committee  For the budget it should only pertain to government spending. Anything else should be removed and included in another piece of legislation. That should be legislatively required so that it doesn't just solve the issue here.

Finance committee  The difficulty, as I mentioned in my opening statement, is that Canadians can't properly understand the ramifications of these things, and neither can members of Parliament in a lot of instances. There's so much going on all at once that it's very difficult to give proper voice t

Finance committee  Off the top of my head I can't think of any, but that doesn't means we shouldn't move ahead and attempt to do this—

Finance committee  Yes, I would agree with it and he's got it spot on. It's impossible for members of Parliament to properly represent their constituency regarding omnibus legislation. It's something that Stephen Harper has said himself, and something that I believe we're hearing from individual MP