It is positive, David.
It's satisfying. It reaffirms my belief that what we do means something and that we are all working on behalf of Canadians.
As a bit of an aside, let me give you two quick examples of how your government and certain ministers in your government have shown to me that they know the difference between right and wrong.
On one occasion, I had a constituent who was in more than just a spot of difficulty. He had some big problems. He was a landed immigrant who had been in Canada for over 20 years. He came from Australia. For some reason—and he readily admitted it was through his own inattention or perhaps negligence—he never applied for citizenship or even permanent residency status. He and his wife had three young kids, all born in Canada. He married a Canadian girl and had three children. They had planned the trip of a lifetime, to go down to Disney World for two weeks. It just so happened that the renewal process was coming up and if he went down to the States he would not be able to come back to Canada. In fact, he would have to travel back to Australia and start the process all over again.
He was beside himself, so he came to me. I said, “Well, we're not in government, but I'll talk to the minister responsible”, who was John McCallum at the time. Luckily, I happened to catch him on a day when he was a minister in a committee of the whole taking answers, so he had his entire staff in the government lobby. I explained the situation. He said yes and handed me off to his parliamentary affairs person, or chief of staff, or someone. We got it done. My constituent was able to go down to the States with his family and not worry about being prevented from returning to Canada. To his immense credit, the minister made it happen.
Another example is with your current Minister of Veterans Affairs. One of my constituents, a veteran, was injured in Afghanistan. He injured his back. When he came back to Canada and the Veterans Affairs doctors examined him, they recognized the fact that his injury was of such a severity that he would have to go on pension—not full pension, partial pension. Over the years, his back condition got worse, but Veterans Affairs seemed unwilling to change the status of his pension. He had multiple doctors certificates, multiple X-rays, and proof that his condition had worsened significantly, but the doctors at VAC didn't want to change his status, so he was still on a partial pension when he really deserved a full pension, because he was unable to work and in extreme pain.
I went to Kent Hehr, the Minister of Veterans Affairs, and told him that I had a constituent in a case where I thought the constituent was getting screwed over. Immediately he said, “Go to my office, give my staff the information, and we'll see what we can do.” I did that. For two months nothing really happened. I was, of course, getting pressure from my constituent, who was in great pain and getting impatient. The bills were piling up because he couldn't work anymore.
I went to the minister once again after a couple of months. I knew that these things take time, but because I wanted to show him a willingness to work together, I said, “Minister, I'm going to ask you a question in question period today, and I'm going to come after you. Here is the question, so you can be prepared to give an answer. I don't want to sandbag you on this one, but I'm going to have to come after you on this. I have to make it public.”
He said he appreciated that, and he gave an answer. To his immense credit, less than a month later, my constituent's case was reviewed and he received a full pension. Trust me, he was one of the happiest individuals I'd ever seen, but nothing made me feel better than the fact that I was able to accomplish something in consultation with a minister who is not in my own party.
I got many things done when we were in government. I was able to get passports turned around in 24 hours. I was able to take care of some immigration problems. My most favourite memory was during a July 1 parade in my little hometown of Regina Beach. It's a small community but it's a resort town, so during the summer months the population explodes. The static population during the winter months, in other words, not cottage owners but permanent residents, is about 1,500 to 1,800. It gets up to around 20,000 or 25,000 people during the summer.