Senator Gold: Senator Plett, out of respect for you and this debate, I did not rise in the course of your debate to raise a point of order, and I will not do that. However, you made allusions to statements that I made about how this bill should be treated which I did not make in the chamber; and if I said anything on that subject, it would have been in the context of a confidential leaders’ meeting. I have never, in the two years I have been Government Representative, treated those meetings as anything other than confidential. I’m going to assume that was inadvertent on your part and I simply want to now move to my question.

In the interests of making sure that the chamber is not under some confusion, I wonder if you could help clarify. Would you agree then that the drafting error to which Senator Griffin referred is not in fact a drafting error in Bill C-12 but is indeed another section of the Old Age Security Act? Would you agree that it is important that Bill C-12 be studied properly but implemented in a timely fashion so that the bottom line of our seniors is not negatively affected?