Madam Speaker, the government, during the course of the debate, has accused the New Democratic Party of filibustering this particular debate. However, I would like to point out that the closure motion, which was tabled by the government, has interesting implications.
The government did not set any limit whatsoever on the time allocation of each stage of the bill. It used standing orders to set times for each individual speech by each individual member, but each stage of the bill was left without any special consideration. This is not how the government treated the HST bill in the previous Parliament, or the Budget Implementation Act in this Parliament.
In the previous parliaments and in this Parliament, the government had set, through government business specifically under Motion No. 3, a specific limitation on the time allocation for each individual stage of the bill. Actually, in the HST debate, the entire debate lasted six hours according to the government's own motion of closure.
If the government is so incensed about filibustering, why did it invite the New Democratic Party to do so and enable it by establishing rules for a filibuster?