Mr. Speaker, I have been wanting to put this question to a government member all day and this gives me a chance to do so.
The difficulty I see happening in the House today is more a problem of how well the House leaders are getting along in scheduling time than it is the substance of the budget bill.
I just want to put on the record what I see, and although I am not privy to the meetings of the House leaders of the governing Liberal Party, the Conservative opposition, or the New Democrats, my sense from the fact that we have time allocation on the bill is that things are not going as co-operatively as they might.
I know that the bill has been before us for quite a while at second reading because of the fact that I was allowed to speak to it, and slots for members in the parties that are smaller only come along rarely, so we have had quite a lot more debate at second reading. But I object to these time allocations just the same.
While I am not going to say, “a plague on all their houses”, I wonder if the member for Halifax can give me any kind of insight as to what is going on, why we have time allocation when the bill, with co-operation, should have gone to committee already.