Mr. Speaker, when we talk about misleading the people of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, I will say that the government misled the member for Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley by saying what was said by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency:
Mr. Speaker, what I suspect Nova Scotia and Atlantic MPs will do is support the budget because it is good for Nova Scotia. It in fact allowed the government of Nova Scotia to balance its budget this year.
That is what I do not understand. The government said that to the member, because the member was sitting in the House:
However, I can tell the member opposite what we will not do. We will not do what the Liberal leader did to the member for Thunder Bay—Superior North. We will not throw a member out of caucus for voting his conscience. There will be no whipping, flipping, hiring or firing on budget votes as we saw with the Liberal government.
My question for the member is, did the government mislead the member of Parliament? Did the member of Parliament feel that he could vote his conscience and he would stay with the Government of Canada, the Conservatives? Then all of a sudden, right after the vote, he was told that he would be sitting on the other side the next day. It is the same way that the government has misled the governments of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, because we--