It's not a point of order, but I respect my colleague tremendously. If hypothetically we were—perhaps it's dangerous to negotiate in public, as I've heard multiple times in the last couple of weeks—to get the minister for two hours, and instead of starting the clause-by-clause on Thursday just doing it three days later, on the Monday, my sense is that we would be able to move forward with this in a meaningful way.
We respect the will of the people. On our side of the aisle, we understand that the Liberal Party won an election and they entered into a supply and confidence agreement with the New Democratic Party, so we just want to make sure that the Canadian people have the ability to hear their finance minister for all of two hours. We would just, in the regular schedule of business, delay the bill for all of three days. Then we can all move on with our lives.
I stand to be corrected—and if the parliamentary secretary or anyone on their side wants to correct me, I'm more than willing to be—but my understanding is that the deputy leader and finance minister is unwilling to give two hours to the Canadian people, to the representatives of the Canadian people. We were all—Ms. Chatel, Ms. Dzerowicz, Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Baker—duly elected, and we are all representatives of the Canadian people. She's unwilling to give us two hours—which might be, I don't know, 10 to 15 rounds of questions at most—to answer the questions we are duly elected to ask.
Yes, Mr. Blaikie, essentially all we're asking for is three days and two hours. I don't think that's an extraordinary ask.
I'll continue on, though. I would love it if the parliamentary secretary would get up at this point and say that this sounds like an official opposition doing its job, working hard for the Canadian public and still trying to be productive and work with the other elected representatives in the spirit of collaboration and collegiality, but we'll carry forward.