Mr. Speaker, I am a little stunned to hear my hon. colleague from Alberta across the way, who ran on a platform to rid Parliament of the Liberals, a platform of open, transparent and participatory government, while every move the Conservatives have made has removed those promises from the way they govern.
I am a little stunned to hear the hon. parliamentary secretary say that debate in Parliament is a filibuster. We simply want the opportunity to debate a budget bill. That is our primary responsibility. It is to hold the government accountable on spending. That is why people elect us to come to the House of Commons.
We have to remember that only 38% of citizens elected the current government. The remainder elected us, the opposition, to hold the government accountable on spending. We are simply doing our due diligence.
I guess it has gone from bad to worse. I find it absolutely stunning that not only are the Conservatives now invoking closure so early in this very important debate, which frankly is a lot about law and policy and not just monetary measures, but in fact they did not even have a briefing because they did not have interpretation on the first day.
So here we are doing our best to have a cogent debate on a bill, and the Conservatives are not assisting members of Parliament whatsoever.