Mr. Speaker, it is encouraging to see the New Democratic Party come alongside the Liberal Party, at least at this stage. In committee, the NDP members were quite eager to vote with the government to pass things through and limit debate on the bill.
Only the Liberal Party has constantly held the government to task for the introduction of this budget bill, and for good reason. We believe that the budget bill, which is historic in terms of the way in which it is abusing the House, needs to be opposed at all stages, not just at third reading or second reading. We are glad that the NDP has finally seen the light and has decided to join the Liberals in opposition to the bill. We look forward to maybe having a little more support toward that.
The government, once again, has seen the merit in bringing in time allocation in order to force through the bill. Surely to goodness it recognizes, given that the bill takes into consideration numerous pieces of legislation, that the bill itself could have been a legislative agenda. It is unfair to expect Canadians, especially parliamentarians, to provide due diligence in ensuring that what we are passing is being done properly.
A number of years ago, when the Liberals brought in a 21-page budget bill, the current Prime Minister criticized the Liberal government saying that the bill was far too big. Now we are talking about hundreds of pages. In fact, the Prime Minister back then told the Liberal government that dividing the bill into several components would allow members to represent the views of their constituents on each of the different components of the bill. There are a lot more components to this bill. We are talking about hundreds of pages as opposed to 21 pages.
What has changed? Why has the Prime Minister decided that these types of bills are proper today when he opposed them so firmly back in the 1990s? Like the NDP, he has had a flip-flop. Why?