Mr. Speaker, the past few weeks have given us an opportunity to see exactly what the strategy of the official opposition is. It is one of seeking to simply run up the score by compelling the government to resort to time allocation in order to advance any proposition.
We had to resort to time allocation with respect to the pooled registered pension plan bill. That bill is broadly supported by every province and generally is seen as non-controversial. However, it was impossible to get any agreement from the official opposition on the length of time for debate.
We saw it with the copyright bill. The identical bill in the previous Parliament went to committee after seven hours of debate. After 75 speeches here in the House, the official opposition simply had not shown any willingness to come to any agreement on the number of speakers it would require before sending the bill to committee where the detailed study could actually occur and it could advance. That is an important bill for the economy, the high tech sector and for job creation. Again, it was impossible to get that bill to advance without resorting to time allocation.
We see the same thing with Bill S-5. A highly technical bill comes along every five years. The last two times it has come along all the parties have agreed to send it to committee after one day of debate. We could not get any agreement out of the NDP. Those members would not ever provide us with a single list of the number of speakers they had, the number of days they wanted for debate. The Liberals, in fairness, did. They were in agreement with approaches to move this matter forward. The only way to move this legislation forward is to resort to time allocation again because the NDP simply will not co-operate.