Mr. Speaker, knowing how important that particular question was to my colleague across the way, if he wants to walk over, he can look at the numbers I read off. I suspect it was there, as the clerk at the table is very efficient and has already indicated it is there.
A number of thoughts come to my mind in regard to what we are debating. Members would be very familiar with my standing up to express concerns whenever there is a concurrence report that is brought to the floor of the House of Commons. I do that because I recognize the finite amount of time that the House is in fact operational or open where we are actually able to deal with Private Members' Business, opposition days, government business and so forth.
Over the last number of months, we have seen a great deal of effort to prevent government agenda items from being debated. I am going to speak specifically to this concurrence report but before I do, I want to highlight that we are going to be sitting later tonight. The reason we are going to be sitting later tonight is that we have the 12th report of the Standing Committee on Finance that we have to deal with. We also have to deal with the 14th report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.
These are all concurrence reports. Opposition members also have other mechanisms or tools, and this is where it becomes a little more relevant, even for the motion that has been put forward today by the Bloc.
We all have a very good sense of our feelings with respect to the report, which I support, and I believe the majority of the House will be supporting the report. We know that because it passed through a standing committee with a majority vote. There were two opposition reports attached that are dissenting reports.
My concern is that, in this case it is the Bloc, but most often it is the Conservatives, when they bring up these concurrence reports, they are actually preventing substantive debate on a wide spectrum of different issues.
For example, today, we were supposed to be debating the fall economic statement and the legislation.
It was interesting. The very first debate that we had was a private member's hour, and it was dealing with the farm carbon pricing. The member stood up, and the first thing he said was that they have four priorities, as the Conservative Party. It was interesting when, an hour later, the leader of the Conservative Party stood in this place and, in essence, said the same thing, that they have four priorities. He listed the four priorities of the Conservative Party.
