No, Mr. Speaker, I was not suggesting that. I was implying that perhaps he was not listening to my comments previously, for whatever reason. I will let the House decide what the reasons were; I did not attribute them.
The member, who was not listening to my remarks previously, for whatever reason, would know that in fact the government's effort in this bill, including the acceptance of amendments from the opposition and amendments proposed by the parliamentary committee, is evidence that we have tried as a government to get the input of all members of the House and from people outside to produce a good report to present to this House in an effort to get something unanimous. We wanted to get something that Parliament as a whole could live with in terms of a piece of legislation.
As critical as I was of the previous government, Mr. Speaker, as you will no doubt recall, you will remember that when we produced the bill that is presently the law of the land in regard to lobbying, I supported the bill in the end at third reading and recommended, as the critic, to my colleagues to do so. I thought it was important that whatever law we had on the statute books dealing with lobbyists be supported by all of Parliament.
At that time the New Democrats did not support it, and I thought that was wrong, because it was sending the wrong message. The message would have been sent, had I not supported it and recommended that support to my colleagues, that the law was inherently flawed and those administering it could never do a proper job. I do not think that was true, notwithstanding the partisanship that was there at the time. I know a little bit about being partisan.
Today we have taken that law that existed, we have taken the Holtmann committee report, which was unanimous, adopted virtually the whole thing in the bill that we have before us, and we have added to it amendments proposed by members of the Reform Party, government members, and people who have come to testify before the parliamentary committee.
We have added from where we started off, which I do not think was even a bad law. Yes, we said that five years later we had to redraft it, taking into account new situations and how the bill had worked.
However, I believe that a bill on the registration of lobbyists can only work if the members of this House want it to work. I personally think that this is a good bill and that the proposed amendments are appropriate. If the members opposite think about it for a moment, they will certainly come to the same conclusion.