Mr. Chair, we just got into a debate on the subcommittee report, thanks to Mr. Fragiskatos. I would say this. This is a budget that took over two years to be delivered. It is 563 pages, plus there's a notice of a ways and means motion of 170 pages. The budget itself is 724 pages long. The BIA was just passed in the House of Commons. It just landed on our table, and Mr. Fragiskatos is suggesting that he's not sure we should allow members of the opposition ask officials questions.
Are you serious, Mr. Fragiskatos? We are going to do our job as an official opposition in exercising scrutiny and oversight over what is the largest budget in Canadian history, and I hope some Canadians are watching and see this duplicity playing out here. We've got a government that for two years wouldn't deliver a budget and now delivers the biggest budget in history, the biggest spending budget in history, with the biggest debts and the biggest deficits, and we're not supposed to ask questions on it? Come on, Peter; you're better than that
Pardon me; I apologize for getting a little bit agitated there. Yes, Mr. Fragiskatos pushed my button there, but I think it betrays the attitude that some of our Liberal friends bring to this table. We have a right, Mr. Chair, and I think you would agree, to exercise proper and reasonable oversight over the spending of this government. This budget is part of that and this BIA is part of that, so I am not going to be prevented from doing my job because someone wants to ram this thing through in four hours. I'm not going to be bound by a subcommittee decision that we'll only have four hours to debate this bill. If it takes more time, we should be taking more time, which is not to suggest that I'm going to unnecessarily delay this. We've already said we're quite prepared to allow some of these clauses to go on division. That's fair, and it's a nice way of speeding this up, but we will have a full debate here.
Mr. Chair, you've been around for a long time. You understand the value of a thorough debate. I ask you to allow us to have that debate.