Mr. Chair, I did not heckle that member but let it be known that the hon. House leader believes it is more important to heckle and to banter, as opposed to dealing with some facts and figures. Let me give him one.
When the President of the United States first read about the WHTI in the newspaper and about the need to have passports, he wanted to know what was going on. He thought there was a better way to expedite the legal flow of traffic of people and that if people had to have a passport it would disrupt the honest flow of traffic. He thought there was some flexibility in the law and that is what they were checking out.
The hon. member just talked about Hillary Clinton and Governor Pataki who said the same thing.
If the President of the United States and leading congressmen have a problem with this then one would assume the Canadian government took this to be a question of domestic policy with obvious ramifications for Canada. That clearly may not be the case and so the government will be acting on this on the 31st and in terms of our own response with respect to Condoleezza Rice and the meeting we are having today.
I can quote every one of those hon. members. Let me give the House the comments by the hon. member for New Brunswick Southwest since he wants to heckle. He said that the consensus that emerged from the annual meeting of the Canada-U.S. interparliamentary group was that they never realized the impact it would have.
Individuals in the Conservative Party seem more interested in making a point about whether a question of leadership is present, which it clearly is, as opposed to dealing with the more important fundamental issue of protecting Canadian jobs.
Members of the Conservative Party need to make a decision. Are they here to protect the border? Are they here to make sure Canadian interests are defended or are they going to continue with their partisan nonsense and of course deny us an opportunity to have consensus of the House of Commons?