Mr. Speaker, I would like to correct a few things that the hon. member said here which may assist the Chair.
First, it is not the budget statement that is made in the House, that is the budget itself. It is the instrument that is tabled by the minister prior to him reading the budget statement. Mr. Speaker will no doubt knows this as indeed would most hon. members. The document that was tabled in the House constitutes the budgetary document of the government.
A reference was made by the hon. member who just spoke about the requirement for concurrence in a ways and means motion following which the budget bill will be introduced. I have already indicated to House leaders, and I will be giving more detail on this tomorrow, what date the final budget vote will take place. It is only by our constitutional conventions, following the day of the vote on the main motion of the budget, that a minister of the crown tables and then seeks the House's concurrence in the ways and means motion, and only following that will the budget bill be introduced. Forty-eight hours or more later, the bill will be debated in the House.
What is in fact in those budget bills is not known to the hon. member across nor is it even known to myself at the present point because I do not yet have a copy of the document in question.
For him to somehow infer that the procedures that were used were not the appropriate ones, I do not believe bears any resemblance to what in fact has occurred.
On the other point the hon. member raised, he inferred that somehow all expenditures of the government had to be in, not only the budgetary document but in the statement made by the Minister of Finance in the House. Everyone knows that in the day to day operations of the government that is not quite the way it works. The motion that is produced to the House by the hon. Minister of Finance is that this House concur in general with the expenditure plan or the budget of the government. That is the phrase, I believe, almost word for word, that is placed here, following which an amendment and then a subamendment is placed before the House.
I think the Chair should consider all these things. If the Chair does, I believe the Speaker will conclude that nothing at all has occurred here, at least thus far, which is out of order, and I suspect nothing at all with regard to the budget. Although Mr. Speaker will be able to arrive at the conclusion himself once all these things have been tabled and actually introduced. In the case of the budget bill, this will be in some days from now.