Mr. Speaker, I want to say to the Minister of State for Infrastructure and Communities that his is a completely reasonable question. I think we have to really wrestle with this. I will tell him that my colleagues and I have wrestled with this.
I think the bigger question is about how we can make some progress here. The Minister of State for Infrastructure may not have been in the House when I said quite directly, and maybe I am being a bit too transparent here, that maybe one good reason for us all pulling together and saying “let's get the Atlantic accord dealt with” is so we can take away the games playing that would go on around the Atlantic accord and the obstructionism by the official opposition if we do not do this.
Why do we not just say let us get it done? Then we will finally be making some progress with all of the measures together. We have already heard the minister's own colleagues like the parliamentary secretary trying to say that it is some kind of preferential treatment to talk about just the Atlantic accord.
The Atlantic accord does have to do with Atlantic Canada. and in particular with Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia. Let us deal with that and get it out of the way, because the rest of the budgetary measures have to do with Canada as a whole. They have to do with Canadians in every part of this country who desperately need the investment and who will benefit from a huge commitment to child care all over this country, to post-secondary education all over this country and to infrastructure measures all over this country. We would then remove this argument that is going to go round and round about how it is somehow preferential treatment and the question about how an Atlantic accord is just preferential anyway.
Let us deal with it. We all agree on it. Then we can get on with dealing with as a whole the two budget measures, which are multi-faceted, with 28 different components, and maybe actually get the job done. However, we are being obstructed at the very first stage around a very particular thing that it seems we could deal with expeditiously.
I think the hon. member's question was a fair question to put and I do not have any hesitation about acknowledging it.