Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to the member, I am a member from Nova Scotia. I hope I represent the interests of Nova Scotia in the way I vote on issues. I respect his right to represent his constituents in the way he feels he should vote. However, that is not the issue we are talking about on this motion.
He mentioned in his comments that I remarked on the emotion. I believe the government made a mistake in not anticipating how strongly the Bloc members felt about this issue. The government should have gone out of its way to make sure that members had the opportunity to speak, to bring witnesses and to participate in the debate even more than usual rather than invoking time allocation, restricting the committee meeting and restricting the travel of the committee. All kinds of committees travel everywhere. Here was a committee that was extremely important, especially to the Bloc members, and it was restricted from any travel whatsoever. Then there was an effort to try to restrict our ability to put forth amendments.
I believe the government made a mistake in the way it handled this. It should have given them more consideration rather than less. In that way the hon. member could have ensured that the concerns of his constituents were well heard and that he was allowed to do his job. However, because of the tactics that were used, many of the Bloc members were completely prevented from doing their job of protecting the concerns of their constituents.