Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on the issue of the ability of members to scrutinize this legislation. I thought the member's comments were well placed.
The member will be familiar with an exchange of correspondence between the Parliamentary Budget Officer and the Clerk of the Privy Council. The Parliamentary Budget Officer asked for financial and economic data for 82 departments and agencies. He was blown off by 74 of them, and 8 responded.
Now the Parliamentary Budget Officer is having to take the government to court to fulfill the government's Bill C-2 in 2006, the accountability legislation. The ironies are resplendent. We have spent more than 24 hours voting in the last week. We were not only tired, but now we are also voting blind. How is it that members of Parliament, let alone the PBO, can scrutinize legislation, if in fact the government just blows off the Parliamentary Budget Officer?