Marc Miller

“Madam Speaker, I find it interesting that the member for Madawaska—Restigouche is asking the minister how this was received by the industry, because we know that Air Canada was getting ready to implement section 17 of the bill before members of Parliament had even seen the text of the bill. Today we are discussing democracy and time allocation. We are wondering, first of all, whether the privileges of parliamentarians have been respected. I am not saying that everything in the bill is bad. However, the bill under consideration is 300 pages long. We want to do our parliamentary work. We requested a briefing from Department of Finance officials on this bill. This is standard practice, as the minister will agree. How long did it take to get the briefing? Three weeks went by without a response. The briefing finally took place at the end of last week, while committees were in session and most of the party critics could not even attend. I understand that some governments have used time allocation in the past. I understand that it has happened. I understand that no one has a monopoly on this. Everyone accuses others of it when they are in the opposition. I understand that. Now we are being slapped with a time allocation motion, when we only just got a briefing after the government ignored us for three weeks. What does that say about how arrogant the Liberals have gotten since they obtained a majority?”