Madam Speaker, I have a question for my colleague across the way, the Bloc member. I would have liked to have asked it of the member for Wascana before he scurried away from his seat shortly after his speech. I will just give a bit of history to my Bloc friends regarding the member for Wascana.
The member for Wascana was the provincial Liberal leader for some time in that province before he escaped to Ottawa. He was kind of lonely there, being the only, lonely Liberal for a period of time. Now he has come here and history repeats itself, I guess, insofar as he is the only, lonely Liberal in the whole province, surrounded by a sea of 13 Conservatives, and he does not much like that. He does not particularly like the fact that he is no longer in the government, in the government caucus, in the cabinet. He can yap and yip all he wants on that side because he does not have disclosure restraints. There are no criminal sanctions that would apply to him as a member of the opposition, yipping and yapping on the other side.
The members from the Conservative Party, the 13 of us here in this place, take our responsibility seriously in providing the kind of input that the minister requests as he gathers all the input he requires for a very serious and very sobering kind of decision. At the end of the day, the minister, as he has rightly said, made a good decision, that it does not present a likely net benefit to Canada, in respect of the Billiton bid.
I would remind the Bloc member and the Liberal member for Wascana who was here in his seat talking some moments ago that the current Liberal leader in the province of Saskatchewan actually said in public comments that this should be wide open, that we should just let it happen, that the government should not be involved at all.
So it is fine for the member for Wascana to flail his arms and all of that in this place, to flap his arms and his gums, I guess I would say, but what does the Bloc member think of the fact that the federal Liberals rubber-stamp everything and the provincial Liberal leader said it should just be left open, when in fact--