I think the government was swayed by the interests of the employers in this issue. You can tell just by the way it has handled it, if only at the parliamentary level. Will people not find it strange how eager the government was to muzzle the opposition, to use tactics which had never been used before in this House? For the first time ever, a gag was put on committee proceedings. That is really something. Was there an emergency? Was there an imminent political crisis? Was there a
state of war? No. But the government was eager to fulfil its commitments to its friends in the railway companies.
The government wanted to do a job on the CN collective agreements, in order to be able to sell the company for less. This is the goal it was aiming for and that is why, throughout last week, the government did things I really did not like. One of our hon. colleagues, the government whip, even stated yesterday that the Bloc was costing the taxpayers $17,000 a hour, all for nothing. We, in the official opposition, were blamed for having these sittings. We, in the official opposition, in a democracy, were blamed for making Parliament work. Here was someone complaining because we have a Parliament. With this kind of arguments, we will soon be without a Parliament at all, we will just have to close shop.