Mr. Speaker, if I could just comment. Of course I am disappointed that the government cannot see the merit of its own previous arguments on matters such as these.
I would ask you to consider one point that has been raised by both of my colleagues on the government side. That is to acquaint the scope of the bill with the size and the length of it and the number of pages. I think that is an entirely inappropriate consideration. We all know that the scope of the bill is not necessarily related to the volume of paper it contains. A bill could be of the absolute maximum scope conceivable and be extremely short. Likewise we had a very thick bill in this Parliament on the income tax amendments which was actually quite narrow in scope. It is the scope of the bill rather than the size that is important.
I put it once again that this bill touches on a wide range of areas of public policy, what would normally fall in the purview of several House committees to look at.
I would also point out to you, Mr. Speaker, that if you examine carefully the arguments of the government members on the tests of the relatedness of these subject matters that the only relation the government has really pointed to is the fact that they are, broadly speaking, all part of the government's legislative agenda. I submit to you that that is not an adequate test of their relationship and their relevance to each other.