Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak to the hon. member's point of order and I have a separate point of order of which I have notified the clerk.
On this point of order, I think NDP members have to acknowledge that, in fact, they served in the House of Commons as the government's handmaiden. They effectively aided and abetted governing members and supported every effort to steamroll over the committee, including the committee chair, to challenge his interpretation of the rules and to overturn the ruling of the chair, the member for Edmonton—Leduc, who is universally respected as a fair and competent committee chair.
It was with the NDP's support that the Conservatives were able to speed up the process to the extent that the NDP finance critic actually agreed to give up one of the votes on the NDP side, as part of this role, to become chair of the committee to make it go faster, to actually help aid and abet the Conservatives in their efforts to move this along.
The reason this has to be raised is that one cannot talk the talk, as the NDP do, about trying to throw a wrench in the spokes of the Conservatives' wheel on this type of legislation and trying to teach them that they have to respect Parliament, but then fail to utilize every tool of Parliament that we have in our capacity to slow down the process when the Conservatives are so intent on a counter-democratic agenda of running roughshod over Parliament and the committee process.
In fact, the member said that the NDP is against time allocation. I have minutes of the proceedings from meeting 86 of the committee where the question was put on the motion. It was agreed to by a show of hands with nine yeas and one nay, which was yours truly, Mr. Speaker. The NDP actually voted for time allocation and supported the government back on October 31.
The reality is that last week at committee the NDP joined with the Conservatives to form a tyranny of the majority to effectively throw out all the rules of the House of Commons finance committee and make up new ones that suited the Conservatives. I think it is passing strange for NDP members today to pretend that they have been up to the job of official opposition on this piece of legislation when, in fact, through a combination of incompetence and neglect, they aided and abetted the Conservatives in railroading the committee.
When the hon. member referred to the Conservatives using the finance committee, or subcontracting the government's work to the finance committee, I would argue that the NDP were part of that subcontracting effort and were part of that outsourcing. I would agree with much of the member's point of order today, but the reality is that much of his argument is not consistent with what NDP members of the House of Commons finance committee actually did.
I will give the benefit of the doubt to the member as perhaps he has not been fully informed of what actually happened on the finance committee, but I would argue that the NDP members of the House of Commons failed to stand up to the government. They failed to legitimately fight for the rights of Parliament, the committee, the members of Parliament and the people we represent at committee.