Mr. Speaker, I guess I should not expect that members listened to my comments over the last half hour but that is precisely the point I made. New Democrats have no intention of allowing the government to use the bill as an excuse for not dealing with the critical problems of child poverty and homelessness, with the worst agricultural crisis in this country since the great depression, with the deterioration of our health care system and with the access barriers to post-secondary education that have been erected for our young people.
I am in total agreement and so are my colleagues that those are the priority issues. That is why we implore members on the government benches but we also implore our colleagues on the opposition benches to participate with us in dealing with this issue in a reasoned, responsible, sensitive way, while none of us on this side of the House let the government off the hook on its responsibilities to Canadians.