Mr. Speaker, I just want to start by expressing my disappointment at the way the government has come to use time allocation so routinely when we've hardly even been in this place for six months. The government's arguments about the time constraint because of the Supreme Court ruling are troubling to me because a tight timeline is not an excuse to pass a bad law. Government members in committee had ample opportunity to make this a better law. They chose not to, and because of that, we need extra time in this House to make it a better law. That was a choice of government members on the committee, not a choice of those in opposition who now want the opportunity to try to improve this bill before it goes forward.
About the deadline, the fact is that if this bill passes in its current form, we will not be meeting the deadline anyway, because the instruction of the Supreme Court was to confer real collective bargaining rights to RCMP members by May 16. This bill in its current form does not do that, so we are going to miss the deadline anyway by passing this bill.