No. I would like to stand on debate, Your Honour. Thank you.

We thank the government for sending us all a copy of the bill while we are being asked to stand and vote at the same time. “Have you received a copy of the bill? If not, raise your hand because we are voting now.” It is mind-boggling what this government does and expects us to do in return. “Trust us. Do this. The budget will balance itself at the end. So don’t worry; we are in charge. We know what’s best for Canadians.”

I want to again thank Senator Marshall for her diligent work on this. I can only say that we should be thankful that her retirement date extends past the next election, because at least we have somebody who will try to keep the government in check on their absolute wasteful spending of money.

We are voting on $9 billion today. The National Finance Committee had one two-hour meeting on this bill. The only witness was the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Colleagues, if I calculate that correctly — and I’m a plumber, not a financial wizard — even I know that’s $74 million a minute. “You don’t have a copy? No, but the Clerk has a copy.” That’s what we heard: The Clerk has a copy, so if the Clerk has a copy, trust him. Ask the Clerk if this is good.

He’s a good guy.

Senator Marshall has cross-referenced the annex and the Supplementary Estimates (C) blue book to the schedule. The numbers jibe. Obviously, in the amount of time she had, she couldn’t add up $9 billion worth in numbers. Her calculator burnt out two or three times while she was trying to do this in a hurry. Again, I trust Senator Marshall when she says that at least some of this jibes, but my instructions were “don’t vote for it” because it’s a fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation.

I find this so difficult. We have the Leader of the Government who insists it’s not the government’s fault — it’s the Library of Parliament’s fault. It’s never the government’s fault.

Not this government.

The $74 million a minute reminds me of the deer that they shoot at $10,000 per deer. That’s kind of the way this government operates.

I want to offer all of you this, because we have some time here: We will vote on the bill in the next day or so — possibly the next hour — and this is at second reading. I trust that many of these independent-minded senators are going to make an independent choice, and vote independently of what Jagmeet Singh and Justin Trudeau are telling them to do, but we’ll find out.

In between second reading and third reading, we might have some time. I asked Senator Marshall whether she would agree to this, and she said yes. We could possibly use our boardroom on the third floor, and she would do a bit of a lock-up for all of those who would like to get a true briefing on this bill. At least then you will have the correct facts and numbers, and you can vote honestly instead of simply voting the way you’re told to vote.

Colleagues, I want to thank Your Honour for giving us the time to, at least, add this up. Clearly, we would still be sitting here and adding if we had waited for this document to arrive after the break week, not before. We trusted that the electronic version would be good enough, and that we wouldn’t have to kill another 14 trees to obtain this, but then who cares if we spend another couple thousand dollars on killing a few trees? That’s not important. Minister Guilbeault will take care of the environment in some other way.

The carbon tax.

He’ll add it to the carbon tax. Thank you, Senator Housakos.

Your Honour, we are prepared to call the question and let the chips fall where they may. I hope we will have enough responsibly minded people who will do the appropriate thing and tell the government, “You’d better take a sober second look because, clearly, somebody wasn’t sober when you gave us this.” We have done our job. In the opposition, we have certainly done our job. Senator Marshall has done her job. Now let the rest of us do our job and vote down this horrible piece of legislation.

Your Honour, with that, we would be prepared to call the question.