Mr. Speaker, I know my friend from a Etobicoke—Lakeshore would want to be telling the truth in this place. However, he was a bit misinformed. He said that the NDP had put thousands of amendments forward at committee. I want to be clear that we put forward 72 very considered amendments at committee.
Not everything in this bill is bad. That will come as a shock to some members over there. However, I want to go a bit further and talk about what the NDP was looking for. We as a party are focused on what we think are the real priorities for families in Canada, which, obviously, are jobs, health care, pensions and protecting our environment. When we look at Bill C-45, we see aspects of those areas that are being infringed upon or even destroyed in some respects.
We only need to look at what happened with environmental assessment between Bill C-38 and Bill C-45. I have been told that in the past approximately 5,000 environmental assessments were conducted each year, whereas now there would be roughly 40. If the Conservatives had a legitimate concern with environmental assessments, maybe that would warrant an adjustment but not a hundredfold decrease. What is lacking here is common sense, which does not appear to be common here anymore.
The NDP believes in rewarding people who create jobs. In our last platform, we had rewards for people who employed new workers for a year. I know that sounds contrary to the rhetoric we have heard, particularly in the speech by the member for Winnipeg North.
The OECD's best practices for budget transparency states that draft budgets should be submitted to Parliament no less than three months prior to the start of the fiscal year. It also notes that budgets should include a detailed commentary on each revenue and expenditure program, the comparative information on actual revenue expenditure during the past year, and a forecast going forward. If some of that had been contained within the 400 to close to 1,000 pages that we have gone through with respect to Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, there might have been a different response.
We were troubled this past spring when Bill C-38 came before the House and then committee. We were troubled with its content and stated our problems we saw with respect to that, but we were also very troubled by the process. With Bill C-45, we see an extension of the process that is generated when there is an omnibus bill that addresses too many areas and tries to do too much, much of which, we would argue, is not related to budgetary matters. Bill C-38 amended 72 pieces of legislation. I understand that Bill C-45 addresses 70 pieces of legislation.
Let us picture the meetings we had with our six to eight expert witnesses, good souls who gave up their time to come and provide testimony at committee. Each member had five minutes to ask a question. From those six to eight people who spoke on different subject matters we had to select who we wanted to hear from. These were witnesses who could cross-converse and offer other testimony. They were witnesses from all over the place. I do not think that offers MPs of all parties the opportunity to proceed with the due diligence that is expected of us in this place by the people who sent us here.
I have argued that, due to the size of the bill and the amount of changes made in such a short period, it was nearly offensive to Parliament. I still stand by that comment. I have said numerous times in this place that committees should be in place to improve legislation. Members should think about that statement. The official opposition brought forward 72 amendments, none of which were frivolous. Other parties chose to bring in thousands, some of which were reasonable. However, the amendments we brought forward were intended to improve this legislation but not one was accepted by the government side.
The problem is the my-way-or-the-highway approach to the governance of our country and to the changing of legislation. The advice that came from many people on issues around the environment, in particular, raised grave concerns. Those concerns, in my opinion, were ignored by the government side. It is difficult when the government is not prepared to give due consideration to the opinions and amendments offered by the other side.
That brings us to a place where we need to face a hard reality. I listened to the member for Winnipeg North go on about how the NDP was hand in glove with the government, trying to politicize the situation. The hard reality is, whether we like it on this side of the House or not, that the government has a majority and in committee it has the ability to shut down the opposition. When we offered our 72 amendments, the Conservatives' decision was that they were not acceptable. No one can tell me that out of the 72 amendments not one amendment could have been accepted. I believe a majority of them were certainly worthy of being accepted.
I was going to say something about the member for Winnipeg North but I do not want to get too partisan. The one comment I will make is that the remarks in that member's speech earlier were vested purely and simply on political rhetoric. We should be past that point in this place.
In its content, Bill C-45 has a large variety of very complex issues. I alluded to that when I talked about expert witnesses. We need to consider, for example, the overhaul of the Canada Grain Act and the changes to the scientific research and experimental development or the SR and ED tax. I thought we had put forward a reasoned amendment. The proposal from the government moved, not necessarily in a bad way, but counter to the advice we were getting from people who testified, so we suggested that the government delay it for five years which would allow Canadian businesses time to plan.
One of the crucial things for businesses today is to plan their cash flow and research and do it in a very careful manner because we are inches away from a potential recession. They know that, they understand that and they realize the risks they face. To my mind, that was a reasonable suggestion on behalf of the official opposition and I am baffled as to why it was not received.
I will now switch to the content of the bill and we think in terms of the areas of responsibility that the committees are tasked with in this place. To my mind, an omnibus bill takes away a committee's ability to offer its opinions, due diligence and evaluation of the portion of this omnibus bill that really belongs in a specific committee, environment being the clearest example I can give, and then it is sent to a different committee, such as the finance committee.
I sit on the finance committee and I am far from an expert on the environment. I go to that committee thinking I can bring something to it. When there are changes to the Canada Grain Act, the Fisheries Act or the Environmental Protection Act, they should be sent to the committees that are tasked with hearing testimony from people with expertise so they can interpret the testimony to the benefit of the bill.
As a result of the fact that I feel this bill is blatantly undemocratic, I will not be supporting it.
