Thank you, Mr. Chairperson.
I apologize for the behaviour of Mr. Turner, for his rudeness. I think if he has questions, he should give people a chance to answer them.
However, I think he raised an interesting point at the start of his questioning, and that is the issue of transparency—and this is from a member of a government that claimed it was going to make decisions in a public, transparent, democratic way, and actually put before Parliament and the people the amount of surplus that was available...and have us settle in a democratic way how that should be divvied up.
Mr. Chairperson, I don't think there's a soul in the world who believes that what the Conservatives did this week was democratic, fair, and transparent. So I think it's rather hypocritical for the member to ask these kinds of questions, especially from a leader of the largest trade union in Canada that has actually worked very hard to present solutions to government and work cooperatively.
In fact I think the Conservatives on that side may have missed Mr. Moist's reference to the possible loss of something the Conservatives started back in the Mulroney years, and that's the Canadian Labour and Business Centre. I think it would be worth hearing from Paul Moist for a moment about why you're faced with shutting down the doors of something that bridges business and labour and that works cooperatively.