Mr. Speaker, I listened attentively to the member's speech.
With respect, I must say his message is somewhat convoluted. On one hand he says that this is a housekeeping bill. He referred to it as status quo legislation and then talked about the Liberals trying to centralize power with the bill. Now, if the bill does not do anything, as the member suggested, how could it further centralize power? There is something there that whoever wrote that speech should try to straighten out. There is an obvious contradiction.
Let us assume for one minute that the member was confused about the bill being housekeeping and status quo legislation and it is about centralizing power which he talked about initially. The member is going to have to answer another question. If the Liberals want to centralize power, as they have traditionally wanted to do according to the member-which of course is factually incorrect as we all know, those of us who are objective like you, Mr. Speaker, being the independent person you are in the House you will understand this-then surely we have not done a very good job of centralizing.
We live in what is either the most decentralized federation or second most, depending on those who consider Switzerland to be more decentralized than Canada or Canada more decentralized than Switzerland. If we have centralized all that much and it is still the least centralized country in the world, it seems to me we have not done a very good job of centralizing.
Would the member explain these contradictions in his speech because with respect, I believe they do not make a heck of a lot of sense. We cannot have centralized all these things and still end up with a country that is very decentralized.
The member also talked about the finances of the nation which he says we have not sufficiently addressed. Perhaps the member is reading from material that was prepared some time ago. Surely, he would know that no less than the people at Fortune magazine, which is a rather prestigious publication, recently said that Canada was now a good place to invest because it had finally addressed the issue of the deficit and was progressing to clean its fiscal house and put things in order. That is another contradiction. Maybe the
member can explain to us why he believes all these things that are different from reality.