Mr. Chair, the first thing I want to mention here is what we're talking about. I mean, it's just amazing to see the Conservatives try to throw out all kinds of mud. The reality is that what the Conservatives didn't like was that party resources were being used to support parliamentary work, because it's smart when party resources, instead of taxpayers' resources, pay for the offices and the workers inside. After all of those investigations, after the witch-hunt investigations that were launched, there was nothing; there was nothing, no indication at all that the resources were being used for anything other than parliamentary work.
We're not talking about parliamentary resources being used for the party; it's actually the exact opposite and it saved taxpayers a pretty penny. The BOIE in saying that they can no longer work in offices paid for by a political party, it means that now the taxpayers would pick that up.
Now, nothing in the BOIE motion that was adopted, in a very partisan way...and I know, Mr. Chair, you expressed your opinion. I can tell you that having had the interviews with the Clerk around the issue of the BOIE...which we believe should be abolished, because it's secretive and now partisan. We'd already seen indications that the government was moving towards a BOIE that was partisan. That has not been the practice in Parliament. It is the practice under this government, in the same way that there's the new practice of attacking the Chief Justice, of attacking the Parliamentary Budget Officer, of attacking the Chief Electoral Officer, of even attacking Sheila Fraser.
That's part of how this government deals with what they consider to be dissent from the Conservative line. That's why this government will be thrown out in 2015. I can tell you that the Conservatives in my riding aren't going to be voting for Conservatives, because they're upset about all of the repeated breaking of promises and the scandals.
But the real kicker here, Mr. Chair, is that in this amendment, this big decision brought out by the partisan Board of Internal Economy—secretive, behind closed doors—they said we'd change rules as of April 14, 2014. They changed the rules because they realized that the NDP wasn't breaking any rules. Here's the kicker. I'll read it out to you, because it's interesting reading for those who actually follow this thing: “This section”—in other words, this new provisional amendment—“is repealed effective on the dissolution of the 41st Parliament.”
In other words, it's a temporary rule. They changed the rule, and they changed it temporarily.