Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to what our colleague said. The hon. member recalls the commitment which the present Prime Minister made in the last election campaign. First of all, if we were elected, we would immediately conduct a full review of the Pearson transaction, which we did, and that we would have a person of some standing to conduct this inquiry. In fact, the person who did it is a former representative of Ontario in London, a former minister, a former deputy premier of Ontario, someone who is well known, at least to all the provincial parties in Ontario, as really qualified and of unquestionable integrity.
On this point, the member opposite would have trouble finding anyone in the Ontario Legislature, in the present NDP government, in the provincial Liberal party or among Conservative members at Queen's Park, who would disagree with what I just said.
So we had a person of that stature to do the work. He recommended that we end the contract. The government did so. Then the government said that it agreed to defray only the expenses of those who entered this contractual agreement with the previous government but not lobbyists' expenses.
I wonder what the member opposite is driving at. Obviously the lobbyists will not be compensated; we know that. The profits that the companies lost will not be compensated; we already know that. We know all those things. The parliamentary committee heard just about all the witnesses who wanted to appear before it, maybe not all the witnesses that my colleague opposite wanted, but still a good representation of the population and we did what we promised Canadians.
The hon. member will have to explain to me and to Canadian voters what more could be asked for. We did what we promised Canadians. We did it in good faith. We terminated that agreement which of course was contrary to the interests of Canadians.
The hon. member must understand that this agreement concluded by the government was not good and we ended it. Our government ended it. The hon. member should speak up and recognize the good decision made by the Liberal government. I tell you that if the hon. member searches his conscience in the next few minutes and answers us after Private Members' Business, he could easily see that he is wrong to oppose this bill. He could even vote for it a little later today on final reading.
I submit this proposal to you.