Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize for being absent. I zipped out to see the doctor. Obviously it was a mistake to leave the House for any length of time as it appears, like jackals, some have turned on a constituency when the Member was not here. I think it is reprehensible. Mr. Chairman, this issue has come up before and the way that some people pull motions out of their back pockets, it is some type of consensus government by ambush, where there is no warning. We sat around this table, we sat around in Ordinary Members' Caucus, we sat around in government operations. We have dealt with this issue. It was off the table. It was agreed that the plan that was there was justified. In the 11th hour, some folks take it upon themselves to slip this motion in, which I think, at the very least, troubles me greatly. The same Members that are asking for support for their ridings on certain issues. Though I will give them credit, at least this time they did not ask that it be put into their own specific ridings. Though I am sure that would be the intent.

Mr. Chairman, obviously I cannot support this motion. I ask all honourable Members who are fair and clear thinking and have worked through this process for the last nine months to support this motion, to defeat this motion. I think it is an affront. It is an attack on the constituency of Thebacha. The people who are making this motion should feel bloody ashamed. Mr. Chairman, this is unconscionable, in this kind of consensus-based government that we talk about, that we purport to have, when the Members who beat their chests the most often about situations, would do something as duplicitous and underhanded as this. It is totally out of the question for me and if that is the way they want it, if they want to lower the standard of conduct of this House to this kind of back alley kind of stuff, well then we are all going to be the worse for it. That is not the way I like to do business.

We sat around tables and talked about this. I am out of this House for half an hour to go see the doctor and, man, the knives came out of the sheaths slicker than things you can imagine. These guys ought to be proud of this. They could duke it out in the back alleys of Iraq. Some popcorn government that they may be thinking we are trying to run here. Mr. Chairman, I am a little agitated about this particular motion. I will be, obviously, voting against it and I will do my best to tell the people of Fort Smith not to paint all the MLAs with the same brush that some of these MLAs are causing their actions to be interpreted as by this conduct that they are taking towards Fort Smith. Mr. Chairman, I will cease my

comments before I say something I will regret, but this is unacceptable.