Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to serve on the industry committee with the hon. member. As a new member, it is always a challenging thing to come into the House.
I would especially note that she is in a unique circumstance in that for the first time in history, an opposition leader allowed a free vote on the budget, and she took the opportunity to vote against the budget, as did her Newfoundland colleagues. With that free vote, 90% of her Liberal colleagues took the opportunity to support the government in the important steps.
In terms of the steps we are taking, our budget contains a long list of initiatives to stimulate the economy and make sure Canadians are working. We have doubled the amount of money in the gas tax and made it permanent. For this year it will be doubled. It is now permanent, something municipalities find very important.
My encouragement right now would be to ensure that we get the budget implementation bill back to the House, that we vote on it and that we all support it. Hopefully this time around the hon. member will rethink her position with the free vote and actually support the budget in an attempt to get the money flowing to the communities she talked about.