Mr. Speaker, before I ask a question of my hon. colleague from Calgary, I must say that my colleague from Winnipeg needs to take a little history lesson. In fairness to him, the fact is that it was the Liberal Party, through confidence votes, that kept the Conservative government alive for 100 votes. He is the last person who should be talking about supporting the Conservative Party.
What the Minister of State for Finance is saying is incorrect. If there are urgent aspects in the bill that need to be done by January 1, the government could easily take those aspects out of the omnibus bill, seek consent from the House, especially from the official opposition, and move those aspects of the bill quite quickly, like we did with the pension reform legislation. The problem is that by lumping all of these aspects into a massive bill, which even he has not read and I doubt anyone in the House has read, there will be mistakes and errors.
Why does the government not just take out those aspects that the member says are so critical, seek unanimous consent, see if they can be moved rather quickly and allow proper debate on the rest of the bill?