Just in support of Mr. Julian's point, I agree with the contents of the motion. This is the second time I've done clause-by-clause consideration at the committee, and there are a lot of amendments that have been proposed specifically by the New Democrats, who proposed a lot of very technical amendments.
One of the highlights of clause-by-clause is having all the officials here before the committee so that we can duly consider every single component of the bill and ask whether our amendments attain the goals that we have in mind when we propose them. We don't have the advantage of being in a government caucus necessarily, so we can't lean on officials in government departments outside of committee time, typically.
I know last year when we did this clause-by-clause consideration, that was when we figured out whether subamendments were necessary and whether fine-tuning of certain amendments was necessary. A programming motion, the way it's always dropped down on this committee for the consideration of the BIA.... Typically, I would think we'd want to give ourselves enough time to be able to propose amendments that are reasonable and that attain some public interest goal, public good goal. It's not always possible.
We had a constituency week last week and, because of time needed for translation work from English to French and from French to English, it doesn't give a lot of time for stakeholder groups to come to us with fine-tuning amendments to the bill itself. When you have governments basically guillotining the committee's work at a certain hour of a day on a certain specific time, it doesn't really allow us parliamentarians to fulfill our work on behalf of our constituents, assuring them that we have done the work.
The most basic function of Parliament is to approve spending and things related to spending. I'm probably one of the few members who likes the estimates process, who looks forward to it and who reads the departmental plans for the finance department, and the BIA is integral to that process. Without the BIA compared to the budget document, as Mr. Julian said....
The Speaker has now for the second time ruled that the BIA went beyond the contents of what the budget said was permissible. This motion is completely reasonable, and what we should be doing is providing good, transparent government and holding them to account, which includes holding officials to account on the contents of the BIA.
I will be supporting the motion. It makes perfect sense to devote extra time for clause-by-clause consideration of different amendments and different parts of the BIA.