Madam Chair, if you say I'm straying off topic by providing background to the bill, I don't see what the economic crisis has to do with it. The economic crisis is unrelated to the passage of a bill; at least that's what I think. Nevertheless, four years elapsed between the tabling of the Auditor General's report and the start of the debate on second reading of Bill C-36.
I have to wonder, Minister. I see that all the parties want to move as quickly as possible. However, we see that there has been no concrete action on the government side. I repeat, in June 2010, when Bill C-36 was introduced, you could have sought unanimous consent. The committee had already worked on it; we had been working on it for a long time. Between the end of April and June 2009, we had five meetings on Bill C-36, and the committee was unanimous; there was consent by all parties. When I'm told that this is important, that we have to move quickly...
We saw what happened with cadmium, for example. If the bill had already been passed, we could have avoided problems last year. So you can't tell me that you're taking this seriously and that you want to take all possible steps. We can see that's not the case. Not all steps have been taken, and, no, you haven't been as quick as you could have been.