We are witnessing the same sort of failures on just about every front.
On criminal justice, we see a government that has lurched from one position to another. For years the Liberals denied Canada had any crime problem. They pushed drug legalization. They said that mandatory minimum sentences did not work. That was only a few weeks ago in the House of Commons. Now, today, they are talking tough on crime in response to 48 shootings on the streets of Toronto.
On trade, the Prime Minister, who came to office promising a more mature relationship with the United States, is now reduced to lecturing the President of the United States for the benefit of the Canadian media because the U.S. administration stopped listening to him a long time ago.
On health care, the Prime Minister promised to fix health care for a generation and considered health care waiting times his top priority in the last election. Now he is content to let the provinces come up with a patchwork scheme of wait time benchmarks and to wait until 2008 before setting targets to reduce wait times. Medical wait times have doubled under the Liberals and the current Prime Minister has only added one more wait time, the time we will have to wait to get action from that do nothing government.
Finally, on the national unity front, the Prime Minister, having missed opportunity after opportunity to work with the most committed federalist premier we have had in the province of Quebec in my lifetime, now wants to sound tough, talking against the new leader of the Parti Québécois, who not only is not the premier of Quebec, he does not even have a seat in the Quebec legislature. He wants to be tough over the Clarity Act, legislation his own Quebec lieutenant does not support.
My position on clarity is known, which is in contrast particularly with that of the Prime Minister, who refused to speak of it during the Chrétien years. Quebeckers, however, be they federalist or sovereignist, do not want to debate the rules of the next referendum. What they do want to debate is how to construct a stronger Quebec within a better Canada. They want more than a choice between corruption and separation, which is all this Prime Minister and the Parti Québécois want to offer them.
A party, and I think this is important to repeat when we are talking about the Clarity Act and the rule of law, that has been named in a judicial inquiry, a royal commission, has been found guilty of breaking every conceivable law in the province of Quebec with the help of organized crime cannot lecture the separatists or anyone else about respecting the rule of law.
The Liberals cannot lecture about respecting the rule of law. They cannot move forward, at least in a straight line on reducing taxes, fighting crime, standing up for our trade interests or reducing wait times in health care. The country cannot go on without a change of government. That is why the House has lost confidence in the government.
The Prime Minister will claim that all this is about trying to provoke an unnecessary Christmas election, as if we all would prefer to campaign in the snow. Even now the Prime Minister could choose to accept the recommendations of the House last Monday and agree to call an election in January for February. The choice to call an election at this time is the Prime Minister's. I acknowledge fully the leader of the New Democratic Party who has given the Prime Minister every conceivable opportunity to do that.
If the Prime Minister does not want to accept the NDP compromise, the official opposition would be prepared to face the public in a general election. The government will say that such an election is about making Parliament work, or about the economy, or about some ghastly, frightening policies of the opposition parties, but that will be nothing but a smokescreen.
If the Prime Minister chooses to call an election this time, the election will be about the choice that Canadians must make: which party can ensure the change of government needed to restore accountability in Ottawa. It will be a choice between old style politics and sweeping new reforms. It will be a choice between a culture of entitlement and corruption and a culture of accountability and achievement, between benefits for a privileged few and honest government for all citizens. That is the choice we face.
While I have complete confidence in the choice the Canadian people will make, I have no more confidence in the choices the government would make if it serves any more time in office.
That is why I move, seconded by the hon. member for Toronto—Danforth:
That this House has lost confidence in the government.