Mr. Speaker, in fairness, I should say that my colleague in the NDP worked very hard at committee. He is correct in the sense that often the Conservatives and the NDP do not agree, probably 90% of the time. However, on this issue he listened to what I said and I listened to what he said. A lot of the amendments he brought forward, I supported. Members from the Bloc brought forward amendments.
It is interesting, and the member will recall, that at committee the Bloc members had their amendments ready. The NDP members had their amendments ready. We had our amendments ready. Even some Liberal members had their amendments ready, but the government did not. We were told that the Prime Minister had taken an interest in the file and he was changing some of the amendments, so we had to put off committee meetings. We had to agree unanimously that we would not meet on a given day but that we would meet the following week. We had to cancel the meeting again because we had to wait for the amendments from the government to its own legislation. It was astounding.
We should compliment the staff of the committee and all members, who really worked hard. We worked day and night to get our amendments ready. Then we waited for two weeks for the government to prepare its amendments.
It shows how ironic the charge is that somehow Parliament does not work because of the opposition when the work on this bill shows the exact opposite.
The hon. member talked about Canada's lead role on this issue. The point of the bill was to take the lead on the issue. It is embarrassing that it has taken so long to get this piece of legislation through the House.
When the two ministers presented the bill at committee for the first time, I asked the simple question of how much the outlay of money was through CIDA and other organizations to shepherd the movement of medicines to these nations. The answer we got was that they did not know, that they were not dealing with that now. That should have been part and parcel of it from the very beginning.
I have very dear friends who have moved to Canada from that area of the world. They have said to me that the tsunami was tragic. It was the worst and the best: the worst in terms of how nature dealt a devastating blow to millions of people, but it showed the best of the human spirit in terms of the response.
That is what this should be about. This tragedy is 10 times the size of the tsunami and we should have 10 times the human response to the tragedy. The government should have taken the lead on this issue and shown the rest of the world how generous Canadians are in that endeavour. Unfortunately, it has not done so, but we certainly hope it will in the future.