Mr. Speaker, as I said at the outset, this is an important issue that the whip for the Bloc Québécois raised and it was referred to the procedure and House affairs committee. We dealt with it there. The report has come back. The member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell reported that back to the House, very similarly to the way he dealt with the motion I made at the procedure and House affairs committee to reinstate an opposition day for the Conservative Party of Canada. That would have been on May 19 if the government in fact tries to continue to postpone, cancel and delay opposition days until June. It is now very evident that the government intends to do this.
I find it more than a touch ironic, as I said, that the very member who chastised us for the use of the new procedure on concurrence motions, which is to have a three hour debate and to actually have a vote, is the very member who stands today to move his own concurrence motion to delay any opportunity for the opposition to have an opposition day. He is someone who in past parliaments, as he often proudly notes, not only was a cabinet minister but the House leader. In my past role as whip of the official opposition I dealt with him on a day to day basis and I built up quite a respect for him. He is always quick to point out his past positions. For him to stoop this low and do this certainly calls into question the respect I have for him at this point.
I want to raise another issue as well, which deals with the budget implementation bill. A lot of fallacies are being perpetrated, many by the Prime Minister of this country when he says that if we do not get the budget passed through Parliament somehow that will be the end of the Atlantic accord, the belated promise that he kept after stalling for months and months.
It was only the pressure from some of my colleagues from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia that eventually pushed the Prime Minister into actually committing to the Atlantic accord and sharing with those two provinces fully their offshore, non-renewable resource revenue. He says that somehow this is in jeopardy.
As members know, it is the official opposition that has been pushing for weeks and weeks to have the government split off the Atlantic accord from the budget. The Liberals absolutely refused. The finance minister said that we cannot cherry-pick with the budget. He made that statement. He basically dismissed concerns from Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia, claiming that they could blame it on the Conservatives if the Atlantic accord does not pass. It is that type of nonsense we are hearing when we have pushed to have it split off, to make it separate legislation. We say, “Introduce it and let us get it through the House”. We have the numbers to do that. We have 99 members. We will support the government to get it through for Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia.
Yet it was not even on the radar screen of the New Democratic Party when it cut its now infamous secret deal. It did not care about those two provinces or Saskatchewan's equalization or the farmers and fishermen. They were not even on the radar screen when the leader of the New Democratic Party cut his now infamous deal with the Liberals. That is the reality we are dealing with.