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Liberal House Leader Marc Garneau wants the government to pull items relating to fisheries, environmental assessment, EI and old age security and introduce them as separate bills.

He says the Liberals are still prepared to slow the process down with hundreds of amendments if the government won’t budge.

“Perhaps at some point they will listen to reason,” Garneau said.

The Opposition parties proposed more than 1,000 amendments to the bill, a list that’s now been whittled down to 871.

The Speaker of the House of Commons is expected to rule today on how those changes to the bill will be handled in the Commons.

Garneau acknowledged that the Conservatives have the votes to defeat all the amendments even if the process requires a marathon voting session.

“Yes, we all know what the outcome is if they don’t fall asleep at the switch,” he said.

“But it sends a very, very, strong message to Canadians that this government just bulldozes through and is not prepared to do what is very reasonable — break out some of these parts of the budget that really are not part of the budget implementation process.”

The bill is more than 400 pages long and changes more than 70 laws.

It requires far more due diligence than it has received, said Green party Leader Elizabeth May, who has proposed over 300 amendments of her own.

“It’s not a tactic,” May said.

“It’s the natural consequence of the size and scale and scope of the bill that the Jim Flaherty put forward, allegedly a budget implementation bill which is in fact nothing of the kind.”