Mr. Speaker, I suspect the member's assessment that it has not happened is quite correct. I posed a question to the former Conservative speaker in terms of whether he felt that the government was successful at achieving a consensus, and he did not indicate that the government had achieved that consensus.
Given the importance of the legislation we are debating here today, would he not agree—and in listening to his comments, I am sure he would, so it would allow him to embellish on some of his earlier comments—on how important this is when we are dealing with regional economic type of bills that would affect the lives of all northerners, and the environment, economic development, and so forth? Has the government missed an opportunity to bring forward legislation in which there could have been a much broader consensus so that everyone would be feeling part of something, as opposed to it coming down from Ottawa?