Mr. Speaker, naturally I was rather disappointed in the results after all of that work. I thank the hon. member for his observation that it was an excellent bill, but it failed and it failed for a number of reasons, all of which are contained in the House.
The first and foremost reason that it failed was the Prime Minister whipped the Conservative caucus. I have never seen a situation where a prime minister insists that 140 of his members show up and vote against a private member's bill. He also, in the last hour of debate, had two of his senior ministers speak against the bill. He further had one of his senior ministers go out and scrum against the bill. It was an extraordinary response to what literally millions of Canadians wanted done.
On the other side of the House, there were a number of people who did not show up, including a number of members in the hon. member's party. It is what it is and it is a disappointment to us all. I thought we could have actually done something on this file. It looks like, for the balance of this legislative period, for the balance of this Parliament, nothing will be done because the Prime Minister shows no interest in a legislative response to the egregious abuses of Canadian mining companies operating abroad.