Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
I agree with my colleague that this amendment to the amendment is basically a different way of doing the same thing that a previous motion had done and that we voted down on this committee.
At the very heart of what I think the opposition would like to see is to ensure that our Minister of Finance comes before us to speak to federal budget 2023. Our clerk has indicated, and updated our committee this morning to indicate, that she has agreed to attend on May 16.
As well, in case the opposition doesn't know this, we are also very much in agreement with the amendment that Mr. Blaikie had put forward, that the Minister of Finance be invited to appear for two hours on the bill and that this appearance be scheduled before May 18. There's no question that the minister is coming. There's no question that she's going to be answering questions about federal budget 2023. There's no question that she has to be here to answer questions about an extraordinarily important budget.
I'll also say to you that there seems to be some question about why we're sending out sections of federal budget 2023 to various committees. Well, I know it was something that was asked for by I believe Mr. Chambers. I think it was asked for by Gabriel Ste-Marie. I think it was asked for by Mr. Blaikie. This is very typical practice. I've been blessed to be on this committee for a number of years. We do this almost every single year. This is typical. You send out portions to get feedback from other committees that are already looking at these topics.
To Mr. Morantz's comments about the relevance of a number of items that are in federal budget 2023, that they are put in with no rhyme or reason, I would say that this is absolutely not true. Every single thing that is in federal budget 2023 is relevant to...either we've mentioned a budget in a BIA, in a past budget; it is directly relevant to what we have talked about in terms of our budgets. This was not the practice of the Conservative government before we came into power. They would throw things in that had no mentions ever in previous budgets.
I'll say to you, Mr. Chair, that I'm disappointed. I think if we had not had the filibuster, which is being led by the Conservatives, then we would have heard from a list of witnesses who had to be cancelled today. We would have heard from the Canada Infrastructure Bank. We would have heard from the Centre for Future Work. We would have heard from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. We would have heard from Canada’s Building Trades Unions, the Smart Prosperity Institute, the Canadian Health Coalition, the Canadian Medical Association, the Daily Bread Food Bank and the Mississauga Food Bank.
These are all people we would have benefited from hearing from. I think they would have given us very some good thoughts about the budget, and would maybe have posed some questions that we might want to be considering as we move forward, instead of us debating a subamendment to an amendment that we had already, in different words, voted down before.
This is just wasting time, Mr. Chair, and I feel sad about that. I think we had a lot of witnesses who would have given us a lot of really excellent information today. I think we could have moved on to truly talking about federal budget 2023. We could have moved on to preparing to have our Minister of Finance come before us to answer questions about federal budget 2023.
Thank you.