Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to rise after my colleague; he demonstrated quite well how much the Speech from the Throne needed the Bloc Québécois amendment, which was unanimously passed by the House last night. I do hope that it will be modified also by the Conservative Party's amendment, which will be put to the vote on October 18. A number of elements in this amendment have been outlined. I would like to draw my colleague's attention to some of them and ask him what he thinks about them
Is it not true that the creation of an independent Parliamentary Budget Office, which will provide regular fiscal forecasts to the government, is the result of the election debate, which very clearly showed that for the past 10 years the Liberal government has been deliberately and systematically underestimating its revenues to such a degree that we are now sitting on surpluses out of proportion to our needs?
A lot of necessary spending was also thus cut, as in the area of employment insurance, for example. Does this amendment not set out a situation which should be reflected in the Speech from the Throne, and on the basis of which we would expect the government to agree to inclorporate this part of the Conservatives' amendment, as the other parties are doing, so that the throne speech much more accurately reflects the reality with which Parliament will have to work in the months and years to come?