Mr. Speaker, of course, if there are amendments, and there will be amendments from our party, if those amendments are taken seriously and are accepted as being reasonable amendments to improve the legislation, if sufficient work is done on it to improve the bill to make it palatable, I do not have a closed mind on this. I like to look at bills and motions and evaluate them for what they are.
Where the bill is right now, I cannot support it, anymore than when I was in trucking and my boss would pay me to go from here to a place 400 miles away and return with the same empty truck. We were paid to pick up a load, not just to drive there and back. This is what the bill does. It has the label and the pages but the words on the pages do not do what they should be doing. Consequently, yes, I am forced on principle to vote against the bill because it does not do anything. It only has the labels.
I would like to encourage the member and other members in the Liberal Party, when they work on the bill in committee, to put partisanship aside and if amendments come across from our party or other opposition parties, as well as their own backbenchers, that they will listen to them. The member in particular knows how open the government is to seriously considering amendments that are made in committee. He has learned that very well in Bill C-13 in the last little while.
I am not very hopeful. It just does not happen around here. It should but it does not. However that is my answer to the question.