Mr. Speaker, I would be glad to take on that point of order at the first opportunity I have. I hope in the meantime the member for Kildonan--St. Paul will read the comments made by her colleague from Nepean.
I will get back to the issues at hand, the importance of getting this budget passed. The budget bill came about as a result of hard work by the NDP in cooperation with the Liberals. I tell the Bloc that this does not mean we condone or sweep under the carpet all the news we are learning about corruption and the sponsorship scandal. We know there will be an election on corruption. That is self-evident. We have a chance in the House at this moment to make a difference for Canadians. We have a chance to get a budget through that means something to the lives of working people and their families.
If my colleagues in the Conservative Party and the Bloc Party had been truly listening at our finance committee hearings and understood what was going on in those prebudget consultations, they would have agreed with us. They heard what we heard. We heard that if there were anything the government could do at this moment to grow the economy, to help reduce the debt, to ensure that we could thrive and be competitive in this world economy, it would be to put money into education, lower tuition and stop the patchwork band-aid of programs, like the millennium scholarship fund and the learning fund. We heard that the government should start to put something meaningful in place for students and help families send their children to post-secondary education.
We heard that not just from social justice organizations or student movements. We heard it from the business community, from corporations and from chambers of commerce. We heard it from every group that appeared before committee. They said nothing made more sense than to invest in education.
Through this time of cooperation between the NDP and the Liberals, we have managed to allocate $1.5 billion for education to help lower tuition costs, to help families send their sons and daughters to university. That is Parliament at work. That is serving Canada. That is why we are all here. That is also why New Democrats are determined to ignore the games being played by the Conservatives and others in the House and to put our noses to the grindstone and get this budget through. It is vital not just to families right now, but it is vital to the future of our country.
It is also important to understand that people are sick and tired of these games. They are sick and tired of all the different moves to try to help the Conservatives bring down the government. All those members see right now is power and the need to grab on to it. They are turning their backs on all those Canadians they came here to represent. They are turning their backs on families who want to send their children to university. They are turning their backs on families who cannot access affordable housing. They are turning their backs on people who need access to public transit. They are turning their backs on people who would like help in ensuring that their homes are made energy fit. They are turning their backs on billions of people around the globe who live in abject poverty, the millions who earn maybe $2 a week. They are turning their backs on Canada's responsibility to share a bit of our wealth to ensure that we do our part in diminishing world-wide poverty.
We come here with good faith, goodwill, in an attempt to make Parliament work. We believe not only do we require a budget that addresses the needs of Canadians, but we have to restore people's faith in this place. They are turning away from us. If an election is called in a short while, all those folks who have been watching this place or who have been hearing about it will have a hard time going to the polls. They do not see their hopes and dreams being represented in this place. They do not see their way of interacting with people, which is on a basis of cooperation and decency reflected in this place. Canadians are sick to death of what is happening here. We have an obligation to stop the games, get down to business and pass this budget.
I urge all members in the House to put aside their political agendas right now, leave them for a while, get this place working again. I urge all members to help us get this budget bill through. It is exactly what the Conservatives want. It would allocate resources from the surplus on an upfront, transparent basis.
I want to remind the Conservatives that this is exactly what they have been calling for in the finance subcommittee dealing with the fiscal imbalance and the need to have more accurate forecasting. They have said, just like we have ensured in this bill, that moneys from the surplus are to be specifically assigned to projects so that Canadians know and have a say and Parliament knows and has a say.
We have made a difference. It is the path to follow for the future. I urge all members in the House to support this bill and get on with working for Canadians.