Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend the member for his motion in some respects. At least it is coming forward. At the same time, I have to exercise some caution and also bring some recent history back to the House.
I do not believe this is beyond partisanship. This is clearly a decision made by the Liberal government on what to do with the resources. We had a similar situation with the disability tax credit, whereby the Department of Finance decided that it was going to arbitrarily reduce the number of persons in the country who could collect a $1,000 tax credit. Our party put forth a motion, which was adopted unanimously in the House. Later on it was clawed back by the government in its bill for the budget. It did that, so I exercise some caution about a motion from all of us.
The real issue here is this: Why does the party over there not have the political will to provide a decent if paltry amount? It basically made a big political mistake and that is what this is about. It is clawing back after a big political mistake. Why does it not have the decency, when it has a $7 billion surplus, to provide this minuscule amount? Why does it not have the political will to do the right thing?
And this is partisan, because the government is making choices.