Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to the member for Regina--Lumsden--Lake Centre. He said that members of Parliament did not have a chance to discuss the budget, or the revised budget, but of course what we are doing here today is debating this budget bill.
For the record, I would also like to clarify something he said. He said that the Conservatives initially supported the government's budget, and so they should have, I believe, because it is a good budget, but then he implied that because of all the evidence coming out of the Gomery inquiry they felt they just had to take action and try to defeat the government.
Of course the reality is that they were reading all the polls, in which Canadians were justifiably angry about some of the testimony, which has not been corroborated yet or has not been fully analyzed by Justice Gomery and his commission, so then they decided not to support the budget. That is the reality of what happened. Of course we want to keep this Parliament working so we formed an alliance with the NDP and we actually have a good budget.
I have a question for the member, who talked about cherry-picking a budget. He seemed to imply that we should not really cherry-pick a budget, that a budget should stand together. I know that some of his colleagues, and in fact his leader, I think, have said that we should take the budget bill and separate out the part that deals with amending the equalization formula for Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador. I know why they want to do that: because some of the members of his own caucus in Atlantic Canada would love to be able to pass that part and would maybe not be so bullish about other parts of the budget.
Does the member opposite agree that this would be a form of cherry-picking as well? Would he still apply the same criteria to that?