It just astounds me. If I were presenting that bill, I would have been talking about how good it was and why it was going to help the people we were talking about helping, rather than trashing some companies that managed to save an awful lot of jobs. I applaud the work you both have done on that issue, because at the end of the day people need to be working. People need to be paying taxes.
We in the Liberal Party supported this bill, even though we recognized from the beginning that many other bills that the NDP puts forward are totally irresponsible. They know they're not going to be in government, so they can just say and do whatever they want. I think it's extremely irresponsible of Mr. Rafferty to put these amendments on the table after we all acted in good faith. We had lots of witnesses on all sides come forward to talk about a small, narrow band of special payments. We were all trying to do that to try to help Nortel. We heard from Nortel people themselves that this bill isn't going to help them either. They know that.
On this side of the table we were trying to see if we could find some way to make some improvements and to help. The amendments clearly take it way over the top, so whether or not Mr. Rafferty and the NDP are playing irresponsible games again, they have certainly made it very difficult for a lot of us who were trying to do the right thing. Frankly, this destroys an awful lot of good intentions that some of us had to try to fix a problem.
The most this bill is going to do, if it gets through the committee.... It will be the end of February before this bill comes to a vote in the House, and that is beyond any hope of help for any of the Nortel people. They also know that. At some point I would have liked to have heard Mr. Rafferty give us concrete reasons as to why we should even be looking at this bill, given the fact they have put amendments that push it over the top and make it irresponsible in many ways. It was irresponsible to begin with, but some of us were trying to make it work. It is not going to work.