Okay, well, I can hardly wait.
This is the hypocrisy of the New Democratic Party. They talk a good line, but when it's time to stand up in the House of Commons and actually support veterans and our men and women in uniform, they hide under the furniture—and you, Mr. Stoffer, have done that consistently.
Let me give you some examples. We were talking about operational stress injury clinics, a big financial commitment by the Government of Canada. What does this guy do? He stands up in the House of Commons and votes against it. We would not have that important service for our veterans had we depended on Jack Layton and the NDP: they voted against it.
On the bill of rights for veterans that we brought in, which veterans had been asking to have for years and which other governments wouldn't deliver on, they voted against it. How much more fundamental can it get?
They voted against an ombudsman and the resources to set up that position, and I don't have to go through what an ombudsman does and how important it is to our veterans community. That's the type of hypocrisy that we have to put up with from this guy.
That type of hypocrisy was actually identified by the Prime Minister, basically on our first day back in this session, where these people, the NDP, under the leadership of Jack Layton, came right into the House of Commons fresh from their aborted attempt to seize power with their coalition and said, without any hesitation, that no matter what the Conservatives brought in, they would vote against that budget; no matter what we did, they were going to vote against it.
So this is basically hypocrisy at its highest level. Here's a man who actually disagrees with his leader on that approach. But I'm telling you that if I disagreed with my leader to the degree this guy does with his, and if he truly believes in veterans and our men and women in uniform, which I don't question he does, I think I and he would be forced to leave our parties, because the truth is that at some point the rubber has to hit the road. You can't stand in the House of Commons and say whatever you want to say and divorce yourself from your party and pretend you're supporting the veterans and our men and women in uniform when your vote reflects that you don't support them. You've never supported them.
Do you remember the heart-wrenching exercise we went through in terms of our Afghanistan mission and the consensus that was arrived at on the floor of the House of Commons? They just divorced themselves from all of that stuff.
Let's go through some of the specifics. We had an election in October of 2008 and we've only been back here a few weeks. We made a commitment to our allied veterans—and he forgot the burial program as well, which was another commitment that we made to our veterans. That is a commitment that we will honour, Mr. Stoffer.
When we're talking about our VIP program for our widows, the truth is that the man in the House of Commons who did most of the work on this was Mr. Cuzner. But this is a guy here who loves to piggyback and tailback on the hard work of others on the floor of the House of Commons. He can say anything he wants, because he's never going to form government; he'll never be on the side of government if he's with the NDP. So they can basically live in Disneyland and pay taxes in Canada; that's basically where these guys are coming from.
So what I do as the Minister of Veterans Affairs, and what we do in a responsible manner.... I think we are getting there much faster than many expected us to, but the fact of the matter is that for our allied veterans and some of the other commitments in the last election, the normal life of a government would be four years. In a minority Parliament, the NDP says they're going to come into this thing with the sole intention of defeating the government on the first day they're back.
How in God's name could you deliver on any promises or commitments that you made to the veterans or to any other sector of this country we call Canada, if you're going to defeat the government on the first day back? It's not even realistic, Peter. You have to stop dreaming in technicolor and accept the world for what it really is, because at the end of the day, governments have to make deliberate decisions on where money is going to be spent.
The fact is that the money we're spending at Veterans Affairs is significant. I went through the numbers with Roger. You could argue that it's not enough, that $3.4 billion is not enough, that you should be able to do more. It's all true. But at the end of the day, you have to manage through each and every one of these.
The truth is that we have made progress. For you to sit there, Peter, and pretend that the world would change remarkably and everything would be done tomorrow if you formed government, well, that just ain't believable. I mean, the world doesn't work that way. It doesn't. And when you publicly disagree with your leader, it's time that the public disagreement is reflected in your vote on the floor of the House of Commons.