Mr. Speaker, what actually precipitated this deal—and I agree with him that he and I had an understanding which I thought we had worked out in the presence of the House of Commons chair of the finance committee—was frankly the desire on the part of the government to immediately go to clause by clause without the calling of any witnesses whatsoever, which was completely unacceptable to the members of the opposition on the finance committee. That was what precipitated the deal.
Then we actually did work out an arrangement, which as I say was in the presence of the chair of the finance committee, who apparently had taken a leaf out of the secret manual of committee chairs, because when we came back after the break, suddenly the deal that we thought we had worked out, which the hon. member, to his great honour, has acknowledged, was broken there in the presence of the committee. The deal ceased to be a deal and that was really—