Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak to Bill C-4, the civil international space station agreement implementation act.
We talked with the people responsible for the development of the Canadian aspects and the participation internationally on the space station. I was impressed by the technological advances which Canada is making and the contribution we are making toward this space station.
I have a number of questions more than concerns. We certainly support the bill. I have questions in the areas of the brain drain and our young people going south, and where the technology is headed and where it is coming from. I have questions on the aspects of training our young people to participate in such a project, the distribution of the manpower and technology throughout the country. When talking to people at the space agency a lot of the focus and the development and participation is in Quebec and some other parts of eastern and central Canada.
Having resided in the west for many years, I once again ask out of the billion and so dollars that are being spent on this matter what is in it for the west and for the young people who reside in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Regina and all those other places. How do they fit into the plans for this sort of thing?
If we are spending billions, basically, over the next 20 years, do we not have an obligation as a central government to have young people participate in this project from across the land and not just focus in on one part of the country? It seems to me that time and time again we stand in the House and ask why the west is being ignored while other parts of the country are indeed benefiting from major programs funded by the central government.
I find it ironic that I stand in the House today on a bill with which we basically agree. I also want to talk about what went on in the House yesterday with time allocation. We were expected to talk about the Nisga'a agreement which involves as much money or maybe even more money than the space station itself. We have a diametrically opposite point of view from that of the government and have made clear that there are significant flaws in that legislation. We have said time and time again that constitutionality was involved in it. There was taxation without representation and all those sorts of things. Why was time allocation used on the official opposition after four hours and 12 minutes?
Then the government brings in a bill for a little over a billion dollars that we essentially all agree on. We are all happy again. The government is expecting us to roll through the bill really fast because it agrees with it and thinks we agree with it.
I raise the question on whether or not my colleagues and I should be sitting in the House allowing these bills to go through. On a large bill like the Nisga'a bill the government does everything to interfere in the process of proper debate. It brought in time allocation on the Nisga'a agreement. We did not even have the opportunity for the committee to travel to British Columbia because it did not want to travel there. The bill was delayed by a day. We forced its deferral because we wanted to force the government to travel to British Columbia.
Once again I am having a difficult time, as are my colleagues, understanding why Bill C-4 on the space agency can come to the House and be zipped through when the government called time allocation rather than debate something like the Nisga'a legislation. The government is happy when we stand in the House to debate the space agency, with which I agree. It is willing to sit around all day and listen to how much I agree with this legislation, but when I stand to disagree with the Nisga'a bill it calls time allocation because it does not want to hear it.
I therefore have a bit of news for the government. I am sick and tired of time allocation and closure on bills. I formally tell the government today that if there is one more time allocation or even a mention of closure—