Mr. Speaker, I will be brief. With respect to the same issue, last week in this House, in response to a question I asked, one of my colleagues, the member for Pontiac, said the following:
—there is a process to follow for appropriating new amounts of money. This process is called a “budget”.
That was his response, and there is a principle of parliamentary law that says we must take members at their word.
Last week, the member for Pontiac, who is a government minister, said that it was not possible to pay out the billion dollars now, which is exactly what we, the opposition, were asking him to do.
Now, the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons is telling us the same thing: trust him, even if he will not give us any details. I am sorry, but the opposition members are not the ones contradicting themselves. We have been very clear about what we want for months now. The problem is with the government. They are the ones who have to provide explanations.
I invite our colleague, the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, to take the Speaker's suggestion to meet with us, and to at least have the intellectual honesty to admit that there is a blatant contradiction, and to ensure that everyone has a chance to speak about this important bill.