I am disappointed to see the hon. government whip rush into the Chamber and then exit again after she raised this issue.
As some of my colleagues who have been quick to point out, during her bogus point of order, this is indeed a prop in the sense that the government designed this, built it, and wrote it to prop up its government. In that sense, it is a prop. It is an NDP prop. It props up the corrupt government, as thin as it is.
In any event, before I was interrupted, I was about to explain to Canadians, who are watching these debates at home, one of the reasons why we have been so outspoken against Bill C-48. During the debate the Conservative Party of Canada and its members of Parliament carried on for a couple of days until the wee hours, up until midnight in a period of extended hours. If this motion were to pass, the debate would be extended hours again next week until midnight, which is part of the motion.
Unfortunately, and it might surprise you, Mr. Speaker, given the amount of hours that we have debated Bill C-48 at report stage, not all of my colleagues have had an opportunity to speak to the bill yet. I think there are still a few who did not get the opportunity because an interesting development took place last night.
When there was a decision by yourself, Mr. Speaker, to have the emergency debate on the Devils Lake diversion, which will dramatically affect the people of Manitoba, negotiations and discussions took place among the parties and we agreed to have the debate on report stage of Bill C-48 end at a certain time. Once that time was agreed to and was laid before the House in the form of a motion, instantly something happened.
All of a sudden we had Liberal and New Democrat members participating in the debate. Up to that time they had not been, other than the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance. I seem to recall, to his credit, that he stayed here most evenings and participated in questions and comments. However, time after time we expected that members of the coalition of the two governing parties would stand up and participate in the debate, but they did not because they did not want to prolong the debate. However, as soon as there was an agreement to have an end time last night, what happened? All of a sudden they started to participate.
But I digress. The point that I am making is that the reason why Conservative members of Parliament felt so strongly and spoke so passionately about Bill C-48 and will continue to when they get the opportunity at third reading is because of that philosophical difference between Liberals and Conservatives. It is right at the very heart of why many of us, and I would suggest almost all of us here, left occupations that we loved, in which we had for all intents and purposes bright future careers.
We left those occupations and came to this place to represent our constituents. We did so because we believe in the trust between Canadian taxpayers and their government. We believe in that. We believe in a government that takes that trust seriously, not once in a while, but all the time.
That is why we get so upset when we see something like this. I am trying to treat this with great respect, but it is extremely difficult. We get so upset with something like this because of the process by which it came into existence and because of the fact that the government takes for granted that it can spend taxpayers' money any way it wants.
This is a government that is already mired in scandal. This is a government that has been mired in scandal after scandal over the 12 years I have been here. I can give the House examples of those scandals, on which the government has blown billions of dollars.
There is the failed long gun registration scheme it came up with. There was the HRDC scandal, which occurred before probably half of my caucus colleagues even came here, but we remember it.