Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform the House there has been a standing agreement between the government and the opposition parties that ministers' statements would be given to opposition parties for their critics' perusal sufficiently ahead of time so they could prepare to respond to ministers' statements.
The agreement was that if a minister's statement were made in the morning, that statement would be given to opposition parties
the night before. This has not happened in this instance. We have had less than one hour's notice. We protest greatly. We are concerned about the minister's mismanagement of this situation and we would ask him to defer the reading of the statement until we have had proper time to review the statement so we can effectively perform our role in opposition.