Mr. Speaker, clearly this was not an NDP budget. I promised I would go home and listen to the constituents. I talked to all nine mayors in my riding, three regional district chairs and 17 elected chief councillors in my riding. All of them were unanimous in that they said not to vote against the budget and not to bring down the government. That was what they said, although almost all of them opposed this budget.
This is like Stephen Harper in 2005, Jack Layton in 2006 and Ignatieff and Dion, when they abstained to not bring down the government right after an election because they were told by Canadians that Canadians did not want an election. In fact, they told us to work together. That is what I heard from my constituents and that is what we need to start doing more of here.