I'll start on a positive note. I fully agree with the sentiments of Mr. Saxton in thanking the clerks and the staff who have been helping us with this process. There ends the agreement.
I'd just like to state for the record that despite what Mr. Saxton said, we didn't spend the last number of weeks debating this. We spent the last three days debating this. We started on Monday and we had yesterday and, I think, one meeting last week. We had lots of witnesses in two sessions, plus one session with the officials. That's all we had for a bill of this extent. I have to disagree with Ms. Nash, though. I think the kitchen sink was probably hidden somewhere in this.
I fully agree with the sentiments that have been exposed here. I think we have a responsibility as parliamentarians to actually follow due process, especially for something as important as the budget. If we have to have many elements—and we're not opposed to having many elements in the budget and being able to actually go through it and study it with due diligence—at least let's keep to the main points of the budget itself. There was no mention of the Supreme Court in budget 2013. There was no point to many of the elements that we needed to address.
Then when we're being told that everything we've seen here has a budgetary implication, that means that eventually the government would actually present its whole agenda in one bill, including the budget. To us, this is unacceptable. This is something that makes a joke of what we are really. We're here as parliamentarians. We're here to represent populations—from the minimum population of maybe 30,000 up north to populations of 130,000—who count on us to actually make good laws. A law isn't good because I agree with it. A law is really good if we have examined everything.
This is the fourth budget implementation bill I've studied. All of them have been exhaustive and long. One thing I find really disappointing is that I haven't seen a single amendment yet in those four bills that has been agreed to by the government side. I cannot believe that all the amendments that were proposed were bad. I cannot believe that. I think some of them really made sense and the opposition actually explained why. My point is that I don't think this committee—and I don't think many of the other committees, and I've been on a couple of others—is really working well simply because we're not fulfilling our duty and our function of making sure the government works well. I certainly hope these points will be resolved in the future—if not before the next election, then in the next Parliament for sure.