Mr. Speaker, the member really cannot blame the NDP for being suspect. We have just come through 13 years of what could be described as an abusive relationship when it comes to being misled about the true intent of bills and secondary objectives, Trojan horses if one will.
My point was not that the bill itself was a poison pill but that the poison pill is in the timing of the implementation. It is of more value on the doorsteps in an election campaign as a promise than is the nuisance of having it implemented and having to curb the activities of the operating government now in power.
Let us not kid ourselves. Members of the Conservative Party are no strangers to the hog trough in recent history either. We do not have to go very far back in history to find some pretty unsavoury practices by previous Conservative governments. It could well be that the elders of the Conservative Party are giving advice to the current Conservative government that maybe we really do not want open government.
My colleague from Acadie—Bathurst reminds me that the most corrupt government in Canadian history, as measured by the number of cabinet ministers led off to jail in handcuffs, was the Conservative government of Grant Devine.