Mr. Speaker, where I come from in the north, we have a different form of government. It is not as partisan as it is here, but I do understand budgets and what I see in this budget is an attempt to establish support from another party in this Parliament and not from us.
I did not see this budget as being addressed to attracting support from us. This is a minority Parliament. The Conservative government had the opportunity. We had given our position about what we would like to see in the budget to garner our support, and if the Conservatives chose to go with another party's direction in terms of regional development or in terms of some of the other things that we see in the budget, that is their business.
We wanted to see the prosperity gap reduced. What I wanted to see for the north was a clear definition of what devolution and resource revenue sharing are going to mean. We have not seen that. The Conservatives have had plenty of time. Plenty of the work had been done by the Liberal Party as well.
I cannot support the budget because it did not address the issues that we saw as important.