Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech today. I did listen to it, despite the fact that I may have been one of those people who was also working at my computer here researching some of the information and facts that he was talking about.
The one thing in particular that I picked up on in his comments was with respect to the whipping of votes. I can tell the member, at least from my perspective, that my votes do not need to be whipped to vote in favour of a small business tax reduction. My vote does not need to be whipped to vote on introducing the Canada workers benefit, nor does my vote need to be whipped to vote for indexing the Canada child benefit.
What I noticed yesterday when we voted for four hours on amendments to the budget was that the member, along with every other member in the Conservative Party, voted on an amendment to delete the reduction in the small business tax rate for corporations. I am curious. Can the member explain why, on at least that one amendment, he did not vote in opposition to the amendment?