Mr. Speaker, I want to add very briefly a few points to what has been raised by my colleague the parliamentary secretary.
The member across the way invoked the fact, and I believe I am quoting him accurately, when he said: "We may be in favour of some articles and against others". That is precisely why committees of Parliament exist. Clauses can be deleted from the bill at committee.
There is a second remedy as well as was quoted by my colleague the parliamentary secretary for those members who do not sit on a particular committee. Of course that is the report stage of the bill where motions can be introduced to delete sections of the bill.
Finally, the member opposite indicated something to the effect that the bill was disjointed or did not fit the criteria of omnibus bills. He indicated that the subjects were diverse.
If that argument stands then surely it should have been made on the budget itself. After all this is a bill to implement the budget. If the bill has that disjointed characteristic that was ascribed to it by the member opposite, surely the argument would have also stood for the ways and means motion that was debated in the House and the budget itself.
If that was not true or if it was not invoked at those stages, and it has not been invoked since the bill in question was introduced on March 16, may I suggest that the argument has no more value today.
Perhaps I could add one last point. The Speaker ruled in the last Parliament that a bill which was far more comprehensive than this one, this bill only having some 20 pages, was not deemed to be offensive and against rule 634 of Beauchesne. That bill was at least 10 times the size of the one that we have now. If a bill 10 times the size was not deemed to be so omnibus that it offended this House, surely a bill one tenth the size of the previous one would not be any more offensive.