Mr. Speaker, it reminds me of a very similar event, and it is becoming a pattern with the party opposite, when a reference was made to a confidential briefing to the media that they thought meant classified when they knew it was not for attribution. The members opposite have journalists in their ranks. They know what not for attribution means. It does not mean classified information was handed across to journalists. Of course that did not happen. However, they deliberately choose to misunderstand public, social, and professional conventions and torque them so they can have some sort of fantastical debate about something that has already been resolved.
This is instead of talking to the priorities of Canadians, priorities such as to which part of the country that next group of jobs is going to come; which industry is going to be supported by what government policy; vulnerable Canadians; people with disabilities who face challenges getting housing; people who are homeless who have trouble accessing emergency shelters; and senior citizens who cannot afford their prescription drugs. All these people have priorities that are not spoken to when the Conservative Party refuses to discuss the budget. Instead, the Conservatives come back with a whole series of fantastical arguments about issues that have already been resolved and decide to try to reintroduce the debate because for some reason that policy interests them more than any other policy or any other behaviour of any other Canadian in the country.
It is a sham. We can tell it is a sham because the Conservatives are not participating, except to stand on fanciful points of order and poke fingers at the other side. Big deal. If that is what they ran on to get to Parliament, if that was their ticket, vote for them and they will interrupt parliamentary procedure, if that was what their campaign platform was, they have fulfilled their promise, but let me tell them that is not much of a campaign platform for re-election. Parties that do that are listened to in a different way than parties that try to govern and contribute.
As I said, motions from the NDP have made a difference with government policy because they are mature, constructive criticism, and are engaged with investigation and research. The party opposite is just playing procedural politics. That is all it is doing. It is the same thing with the all-night vote. We might as well go back to the Pacific scandal and re-prosecute John A. Macdonald for all it is worth. The party opposite is focused on the past. It is focused on rehashing past scandals. Members of that party really do not care about individuals, their families, their communities, their provinces, or the country, because if they did, their motions would reflect that.