Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the first part of the member's comments, the tribute. I have to pay tribute to him as well. We have shared many late nights and he is the last person here on evening debates, until four in the morning. I congratulate him for that.
Then the member went on to ask tougher questions. What he suggested was that I did not talk to the motion of the day. I think I was trying to get at that in some of my items at the end of my speech. The reason is that out of thousands of government programs, on one program related to a limited number of individuals, we have had incessant and lengthy debates. We are debating it all day today, and it has been debated in committee for months. I do not think there is any lack of information or debate on that topic.
What I was trying to say is that I hope we do not lose sight of the rest of the governing, the other hundreds of thousands of things that hundreds of thousands of federal government employees are doing to help Canadians. We as politicians should have oversight. As the government, through our regular checking procedures we should make sure that they are working as efficiently, effectively and as productively as possible. The opposition should be spending a lot of time inquiring into a lot of those areas as well.
I have made the point a number of times previously in the House, that since Christmas there have been very few questions by the opposition relating to other things which suggests there is no platform. However with other things that are going on in the government I am sure the opposition does not think everything the government is doing is perfect, that the hundreds of other programs of the Government of Canada are working perfectly, that we are allocating our funds perfectly and that we are collecting the correct amount of funds. I want to make sure that we look at the bigger picture.
As we look at the remedies, there have not been many comments or discussions on the remedies. I do not know if the member has seen it in his riding, but in my riding groups of constituents have come in to my office to discuss how the remedies are harming them. I would think that the member would like to ensure that the remedies were effective but did not hurt the constituents.