Madam Speaker, when I was elected by the good people of Vancouver Kingsway in 2008 to come here, I was told by the people who operate this place and have a lot of experience here that our prime function as parliamentarians was to scrutinize and approve spending of government. The second thing I was told was that, as a democratic chamber in Canada, it was our responsibility to scrutinize legislation that comes before this House.
The Conservative government has developed a propensity for bringing in massive omnibus legislation in which it confuses and combines a budget with many other important pieces of legislation in one big bill, which makes proper scrutiny impossible in a democracy.
I have heard the talking points of my friends opposite. The Conservatives say that there is more time devoted to this budget than to any budget in 20 years. What they are not telling Canadians is that in the last 20 years there have not been these kinds of omnibus budgets presented in this House.
Obviously, taking the same amount of time to debate a normal budget and comparing it to the amount of time given to debate a budget that is over 400 pages long and guts parks, veterans services, women's health, environmental reviews and sees the closing of everything from consulates to immigration offices, is not a fair comparison.
Given that my hon. colleague has been in this House a fairly long time, could she tell us what she thinks about the degradation of democracy and the ability of parliamentarians to properly scrutinize the budget bill as presented by the Conservative government?