Mr. Speaker, you will not find a more humble member than myself, and I am appreciative of the fact that you were able to assist me, while we were in the middle of debate, in remembering the hon. member's riding, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, so I want to give him due credit. Now I am going to be forced to give everybody else due credit as well.
I wanted as well to thank the parliamentary secretary, who has just illustrated how we operate cooperatively on the committee, because he has pointed that it is important to understand both the form as well as the substance of the letter “a”. If he is suggesting that perhaps by focusing on the letter “a”, which has ramifications for some of the economic and financial structures that are part and parcel of the bill in flowing to this particular amendment, I am only hoping that he will be at least as patient when I go through the other 25 letters of the alphabet associated with the bill.
However, he is absolutely right. We are talking right now about an amendment to all of that fine work that we put together as members of the committee. I want to say hats off to the new NDP member on the committee, who is struggling very hard to find something difficult with this bill, and I imagine he is going to have difficulty with the letter “a”. Otherwise, he is going to be absolutely happy with everything else.
As I said, the other things that one would be happy with, the other 25 letters of the alphabet or the style associated with the “a”, have to do with giving these ports the opportunity to function as true financial entities capable of meeting the challenges of the economic cycles and the opportunity to access all of those benefits available to growing businesses under the infrastructure program. I know the parliamentary secretary would have wanted to say that too. I see him nodding his head, indicating yes, this is right, but I want to thank him as well for reminding me that people can colour a particular letter not only in style, but in a particular kaleidoscope of colours.
However, any way we colour this letter “a”, the bill was getting it done, as they say. It has become part of the lexicon of the House now, “getting it done”, and it gets done because people in the House are men and women of goodwill and they develop that goodwill from an emotive and religious disposition, an ideological disposition, and convert it into political will.
I think what has happened is that there has been an expression of political will to ensure that the bill does receive the support of the House and that when we bring it here, as we are doing now, to discuss nothing more than one small fragment of this great plan, the letter “a” in all of its style and all of its kaleidoscopic colours, really what we mean is the members of the committee, and there are many. I mentioned, of course, the member whom indirectly I could not mention but directly was able to with respect to his riding, and as well the parliamentary secretary. I do not want to lose sight of the fact that the chairmanship of the committee was such that it allowed us to work properly.
That is a lesson that some of the other chairs might learn. They could look at this and see that the positive legislation that has actually come forward in the House. Whether it has been under the letter “a” or the letter “b”, or whether it has come in red vestiges or blue coats, it has really been from that committee of transport.
My hat goes off to my colleagues who worked on that committee together to ensure that we could present the bill. The only fly in the ointment was the letter “a” and I am glad that we are dealing with it today, so the letter “a” should be accepted as well and we would go on with this great bill.