Thanks. I'll be very specific to the debate that is taking place on the amendment.
I wanted to comment on the issue that Gabriel Ste-Marie raised, because it was also raised in an earlier panel by other witnesses, and I think by committee members on the government side. It is this false comparison to anything that has happened over the years and the long history in the United States of brinkmanship over funding the government. One of the beauties and one of the real strengths of the Westminster system is that this type of government shutdown because of gridlock among legislators just doesn't happen. The minute a government cannot get authority to fund its expenses, that is dealt with through an immediate election. That's a loss of confidence in the government, and it would be referred immediately to an election.
This isn't about brinkmanship over the ceiling. This is about setting an appropriate ceiling. If one is to suggest that now is the time to set a ceiling that is at least $220 billion higher—at least—than the broadest worst-case scenario, the highest estimate of any possible borrowing figure, and if we were to accept the argument that we ought now to set it at $1.883 trillion, then one would really say, why not $2 trillion? Why not $5 trillion? Why even have a ceiling, if the ceiling is going to far exceed any notion of spending that has yet been presented to Parliament?
For the reasons my other colleagues have mentioned, I'm going to support the amendment, but I wanted to be clear about that. There's no equivalent or comparison to be made over the long history of gridlocked government spending that has resulted in shutdowns in the United States. That's not a feature of the parliamentary system and the system we have in Canada.