The budget is primarily the responsibility of the finance committee. In particular, taxation matters are the purview of the finance committee.
If you'd frankly allowed me to ask three or four questions, you probably could have dealt with this a lot more quickly, but you're going to have to face the problem now.
There are some very serious financial questions around the application of sales tax to the overall carbon tax. They are financial in nature. There would be no harm done if you were to allow members of this committee to ask some of those questions of the officials while they are here. Absent that, I don't know how we can proceed with a study of the rest of the bill, because frankly, we would be excluding from our conversation elements of fiscal and taxation policy that are clearly the purview of the finance committee.
There's nothing that would preclude the environment committee from asking similar questions, or even the same ones. That's why I said “belt and suspenders”. I don't think there's any Canadian out there who's going to be concerned that we overstudy the matter.
You can pull up any motion you want. The reality is that we have the right to ask these financial questions in the finance committee. Failure to allow that inhibits my ability to do my job in scrutinizing this massive omnibus bill that is before this committee and other committees.