Mr. Speaker, I we are supposed to be debating the government's promise to be more open, to have more open government, and to allow MPs to be more accountable to their constituents. Is it not sad that we have to use the word allow?
What we have from the hon. minister are simply diversionary tactics. We have a real attempt to divert attention from the real issue which Canadians are concerned about. The biggest diversionary tactic is to attack the messenger, to say things about the Reform Party which dared to bring the subject up. They are the most pejorative and outright fabrications to distort our position on a number of issues and suggest that we have no reason to even bring up the issue in the House.
I appeal to the minister to at least stick to the facts when he is talking about these kinds of issues. Some of the things which he said about our party and about our positions are just not true. Canadians are going to find out one of these days that this is a tactic of this government and it will lose its credibility altogether.
We heard from the minister a highly edited version of the Liberal record. We disagreed with a lot of the promises which the Liberals made. If we agreed with them we would not be here, we would all be on the other side. During the election these people took certain positions and promised to do certain things. They have totally reversed themselves. They are totally untrustworthy in a whole number of areas.
I want to ask the member about the document he authored and signed reviving parliamentary democracy. This document was so good, it would put in so many measures that would have been to the benefit of Canadians, to the democratic system that we are trying to operate under.
The member holds a senior position in the government. He is one of the decision makers. He said that in order to enhance the independence of the Chair and in an effort to reduce the level of partisanship when the speakers are from the government party, two of the junior chair officers should be from the opposition so that the four presiding officer positions are shared equally by government and opposition. I would like to ask the minister to explain why he has not implemented his own recommendation in that regard.