Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your intervention. Despite the fact that many of us get very hot under the collar during debate here in the House, it is important that we show the necessary respect and always try to remember to address our comments through the Chair.
My hon. colleague from the New Democratic Party raised a number of relevant issues. First, he said that I did not get to the point. I think I did get to the point. The whole point of my intervention was to reveal what was behind the government calling this concurrence motion on this standing committee report at this time and I think I made my point reasonably well.
Second, I think the member used the words “what about the secret deal that the official opposition had with the Liberals to allow Parliament to survive”. He erroneously said, as we have read many times in the newspapers since then, that we supported the government. We did not support the government, nothing like the New Democratic Party which practically joined the government.
Finally, it is quite appropriate at this stage of this Parliament that members of the New Democratic Party have become the official rump instead of the unofficial rump of the Liberal Party. They are sitting on the right side of the House, in the sense of being with their new-found partners. I think that was probably their secret agenda at all points.
It was hardly a secret deal when the budget came down that we felt at that point in time we would abstain, unlike members of the New Democratic Party who already voted non-confidence in their new-found partners. Their word means nothing. They are completely unprincipled. They will sign anything to get five seconds worth of fame on the evening news. That is the reality of it all.
The reality is that it was not a secret deal. Our leader, the leader of the official opposition, went out and explained to Canadians that we were not prepared to bring down the government at that time on the budget. We wanted to try and make it work. We had some concerns about a lot of the issues but we felt we could work on them in a spirit of cooperation.