Mr. Chairman, I know Monsieur Lessard was trying to say that there's a filibuster going on. Nothing could be further from the truth.
First of all, why did Mr. Lessard pick this particular clause as the first one debated? It's because it's going to determine how he votes on the rest of the bill.
Let's not kid anyone about what's going on here. Why are the NDP supporting a non-national housing strategy by allowing this or any other province to opt out? They want the rest of the bill to go in, because the writing is on the wall in terms of what Mr. Lessard would do if this weren't here.
It's the same for the other parties. You can't pull the wool over our eyes. It's a legitimate debate, and it's not a filibuster. It's making a point as the crux of what's going to happen here today. Let not anyone pretend we don't know what's up or what's attempting to be done here. It's only a sense of good reason that would prevent that from happening.
My point would be this: If this is indeed an issue, and we know how substantive an issue it is and the fact that the Bloc will support the rest of the bill only if this that we say ought not to be in is in, the least that this particular group should do is allow this matter to be appealed to the Speaker and have the Speaker make a ruling on it before it comes back here for further discussion. At least that much should happen. Otherwise we're going on an exercise saying that the Speaker will have to deal with this after we've gone through a lot of debate and a whole lot of other clauses. When it's so critical a point, one would think that we would want to establish the correctness of it before we choose to proceed with all the rest of the bill.