Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to raise a question with the parliamentary secretary. I mean this quite sincerely because already the House has been back in session for about five hours and anybody watching the debate is saying, “There they go again, playing their games”.
The parliamentary secretary knows that the Conservatives, the day before the House went down for the week's break, voted for the government's Liberal budget, including the Atlantic accord. They then turned around and voted to defeat the government in the very next vote to ensure that the Atlantic accord and everything else was killed.
Why does the Liberal government not call the bluff of the Conservatives and support the splitting of this bill as the NDP has suggested? We would fast-track the Atlantic accord, so we could get on immediately with dealing with the next step. At least we would be making some progress. If the government is prepared to do that, maybe the Conservatives would stop playing their obstructionist games when it suits them when they tried to defeat all of the budgets, including the Atlantic accord 10 days ago.
Why does the government not just take a stand here? We could do it. We did it with the veteran's bill. Everybody is in agreement on the Atlantic accord. Let us deal with it and get on with the next step.