Mr. Speaker, I will use my time in this debate to talk about two specific aspects of the bill. One is the use of time allocation, and I will speak specifically about the blended sales tax.
It is important that we have the facts on the record. As of December 10, 1996 the government has placed before the House of Commons a total of 162 bills. Time allocation has been used on 20 of these bills or 12.3 per cent of government legislation that has been presented.
On four of the bills, however, either the Bloc Quebecois or the Reform Party gave procedural assistance for the implementation of time allocation, which in fact means that less than 10 per cent of the bills introduced by the government since the last election have been subjected to time allocation unilaterally applied by the government.
Perhaps more relevant are the statistics on time allocation concerning the actual number of times that time allocation motions have been moved.