Madam Speaker, I understand that members want to debate the content of Bill C‑31, but I want to remind everyone that we are in fact debating a time allocation motion on this bill and the decision to allocate a specific amount of time for debate on it.
I have a question for the minister. Why did we have to spend more than three weeks asking officials from the Department of Finance for a technical briefing on a 300-page bill of which certain divisions, like division 17 on air passengers, have nothing to do with budgetary policy? Can the minister please explain why, for three weeks, we were unable to ask officials questions in order to do our parliamentary homework? There was radio silence.
The minister's response was essentially that we should just read the bill ourselves, since we are a bunch of lazy bums. That level of arrogance is typical of this government.
Personally, I am acting in good faith. I do read the budget document. We spend a ton of time on it. It is highly technical and legislative. We did receive a briefing from officials, but we only received it a few hours before the government imposed time allocation.
I am therefore asking the minister whether he considers it acceptable that it took three weeks before we received a response to our request for a briefing and that his government imposed time allocation right after that.
I am also asking him whether, for future bills, he thinks it would be appropriate to provide the opposition with a timely response so that it can perform its work constructively and properly debate all the legislative issues involved in bills.