Mr. Speaker, I entirely agree with my colleague when he points out that this has been very much a history of partisan politics.
This issue goes back to 2003, as he pointed out, when the former chief justice of the Supreme Court brought forward his report. This bill, in various machinations, has been hanging around now for a number of years. I find it very perplexing that the NDP, in good faith and in a constructive way, brought forward amendments. These have now been dropped from the bill.
A number of us are raising these questions in the House today because we hear the government saying all the time that we should work with it and asking why we are not supporting this. Here was an opportunity to bring forward some work that was very constructive, yet suddenly the government dropped the ball on it.
I very much appreciate the member's comments about the partisan nature of what took place and the fact that we see a government that is very arrogant in the way it operates in the House.