Madam Speaker, in response to the question from the hon. member for Medicine Hat to the parliamentary secretary, I think there is only one person in this assembly being disingenuous and that is the hon. parliamentary secretary for suggesting that this new NDP-driven budget was something that the Liberals had planned for in any event, because, clearly, it was not. It was an attempt to buy votes from the NDP.
What concerns me more than that is the process in which this budget was developed. Quite frankly, this two page $4.6 billion budget was developed in a hotel room without the Minister of Finance in attendance. There was the Prime Minister, the leader of the NDP and a union leader but no finance minister.
I can say that Canadians all across Canada have nicknamed the finance minister “Stumpy” because they think his knees were cut out from beneath him by the Prime Minister.
How can the government suggest that this is a responsible budget when in fact the deal was done in a hotel room without the Minister of Finance present, regardless of the fact, as the minister has said before, that the finance minister was on the phone the entire time.
How ridiculous is it to suggest to Canadians that this was a responsible budget when the finance minister, only weeks and days before, was saying “You can't cherry-pick a budget. We can't redo the budget”. The Liberals made a new budget without the finance minister of Canada in attendance. They are trying to suggest to Canadians that this is responsible policy and responsible decision making.
How can the parliamentary secretary explain that? It is inexplicable.