Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to join the debate. If I may, I would like to pick up where the previous speaker left off, although obviously I will go in a different direction, because it takes me straight into most of my points.
I find it fascinating that the previous speaker and the Bloc and Conservative members who have spoken, the Conservatives in particular, have focused on this issue that the NDP really had no moral right, and these are my words, to join in this agreement to create a better balanced budget because the Liberals are too corrupt. I think I have the argument correct, do I not?
There is a problem I have with that. There are a lot of problems with that, but one is the very amendments that the Conservative Party has tabled today, and the very first one, Motion No. 1, their own amendment. Does it say that this is too corrupt a deal and a process and that therefore the bill should be killed? No. Does the amendment say it ought to be pushed back so that it has the de facto effect of killing the bill? Is it that kind of parliamentary manoeuvre? No.
All it does is say this: instead of there having to be a guaranteed $2 billion surplus as a trigger before the $4.5 billion gets spent, it moves that line from a $2 billion trigger to a $3.5 billion trigger.
I thought your argument was that the whole thing is--