Mr. Speaker, let me begin by congratulating you on your appointment. I also want to take this opportunity to congratulate my colleagues who were returned and the new Liberal team. I believe they won the trust and confidence of the people and that is why we are on this side of the House, hopefully to do something about the problems we have been talking about tonight.
I want to take this opportunity to first thank my family and the volunteers on my campaign. More important, I want to thank the people of London East who saw fit to return me to this House for another term. I am truly appreciative.
Being on the opposition side the past four or five years was a very frustrating exercise and one that sometimes was not as joyful as one would want. I would like to think that this debate tonight is our change in direction. I want to take this opportunity to thank the Minister of Finance and our Prime Minister who have demonstrated two things in these past weeks, that we do really want to consult because we have a common mission here. We were all elected to this House by people who believed that we have the answers to the problems. Regardless of what side we are on and of what political stripe, we are all here to do the nation's business.
The government has demonstrated that it really wants to work with everyone to accomplish the great task before it. We have had an open debate on peacekeeping in Bosnia, the cruise missile and the social nets. Today we are talking about the budget before the fact. I have never experienced that before in five years. We could only react to what the former government had done and therefore it was very frustrating.
I was rather surprised by some of the remarks I heard tonight. Coming from an opposition that wants to play a constructive role they tended to be rather negative. Had I been given the opportunity of telling former Prime Minister Mulroney and his gang-