Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have another opportunity to speak at third reading on the budget bill.
The Conservatives, who may be groaning and moaning in their seats as I begin another speech, have only themselves to blame.
Let us go back to this past Friday when they chose to try a very sneaky manoeuvre and invoke a Standing Order that has been used only twice in our history. Standing Order 53 was used in 1964 to send peacekeepers to Cyprus and used in 1977 to deal with an air traffic controllers strike.
They tried this very interesting manoeuvre to bring this process to a close, to have the budget process come to an end. They did not want to debate the budget any more because it is getting far too embarrassing, far too difficult for them to handle the criticism in this place, and to know that in fact momentum is growing across the country against this federal Conservative budget.
What has happened as a result of that initiative, that very peculiar move on Friday is that the government then moved the previous question which allows people like me, who have already spoken on the bill, to speak again.
I guess some would say this is poetic justice. It is the Conservatives hoisted on their own petard. The Conservatives were too clever by half and I apologize to everyone who has to listen to me give another 20 minute speech on the budget, but I have lots of issues that I did not even begin to touch on in previous discourses.