Thank you, Chair.
I want to thank Mr. Watson for his intervention. I found it heartfelt and hopefully it will enlighten some members of this committee. I found it interesting.
Chair, the motion that we find right now is a motion to limit the opportunity for us to speak. This started in our clause-by-clause debate, discussions, over Bill C-377. I think we would not be where we are if Bill C-377 was a good bill. If Bill C-377 had been supported by the witness groups, we wouldn't be where we are. What happened was that the witness groups said very clearly that there were some significant problems with Bill C-377. We heard from numerous witness groups, and every one of them said it should be costed.
What Mr. Cullen is suggesting by his motion is that we limit all critique to two minutes, and it's not realistic. So one would ask why Mr. Cullen would want to limit members of this committee from speaking for only two minutes.
Chair, there was another issue that came up on Bill C-377, which was that it was not constitutionally sound and that it would be challenged and likely defeated because it would give unlimited powers to the federal government over the provinces and territories. Do we need more than two minutes to talk about that? Absolutely. And for Mr. Cullen to attempt to stop all discussion after two minutes is beyond comprehension, actually.
Mr. Chair, it was Mr. Layton who introduced the bill, and after Mr. Layton was done speaking, it was Mr. Bramley who spoke to this committee. Both of them suggested that the government do a costing of Bill C-377. Can you do a critique, a costing, with two minutes? Well, not a very thorough costing.
I found it quite ironic in the questions we've also heard in the House--and there are definite timeframes in the House, because we have, for question period, approximately 45 minutes, Monday to Friday. There is approximately 30 seconds for a question to be asked and approximately 30 seconds for an answer, because of that timeframe.
Now it's actually 35 seconds, as Mr. McGuinty points out, but we try to aim at 30, because sometimes with the noise and the exuberance in the House, if you aim for 30, sometimes it's 35 by the time you actually start talking from when your light comes on. So it's very important that we have timeframes, depending on the circumstances.
Bills are debated in the House and sent to this committee to be properly debated. In that process, for example, Bill C-377 is sent to this committee to hear from witnesses and then to be debated. As I pointed out, we heard from witness group after witness group, and every one, including Mr. Layton and Mr. Bramley, said that the government needs to do the costing.
What we heard in question period, yesterday actually, was a question on the quality of our water. It was an NDP member from Vancouver Island North, Ms. Bell, who asked about the number of boil orders over a number of years--actually 1,760 boil orders. Well, that's a very serious problem, Chair. And this government is committed to cleaning up the water in Canada.
On one hand, we have members from the NDP—with time limits, appropriately, within a question period—who asked this 30- or 35-second question about boil orders, and then we had a subsequent answer. It was Minister Baird who answered the NDP member very clearly that the government is helping communities to clean up waste water treatment facilities with $8 billion.
Now, the NDP knew about that, but they voted against it. That's the difficult irony I have. On one hand, in question period they're asking questions about why we aren't cleaning up water. Well, we are, yet they voted against it. To be able to deal with that takes more than two minutes. To be able to share that takes more than two minutes.