You can tell that is a perpetual opposition party, Mr. Speaker.
This Liberal government, for example, is not yet two years old but already it has littered the political landscape with broken promises.
This is a falsehood. This is completely untrue. I have just read the whole section of the red book on parliamentary reform and we have complied with every single one of the promises and then some. Yet the member for Calgary Southwest had the nerve to get up in the House and utter this complete rubbish. I can only imagine how much worse it is when the hon. member is off speaking to his supporters at meetings around the country. They have been thoroughly, totally and utterly deceived by the hon. member. If they would simply invite me to some of their meetings, we might straighten some of them out. I can name about 176 other members of the House who could do a similar straightening job on some of the members of the Reform Party.
I want to turn to the explicit promises with which we have complied. First, there was the promise that committees be strengthened, that members be given a greater role. We have just been through a procedure in the procedure and House affairs committee where we drafted a bill. I was before the Senate committee this morning on behalf of the committee defending the bill. It was the one drafted in committee. It was adopted by the government and then passed in the House.
Bills have been referred to committee under the new procedures that we adopted in the House shortly after we took office where the bill is referred before second reading. Members have full scope in the changes they wish to make to the bill. The Lobbyists Registration Act is a perfect example and there are others. We are going to do it with the CNR bill on
Monday. This has given members of Parliament untold powers in respect of that legislation which were not exercised or exercisable in the last Parliament.
Hon. members in the Reform Party were not here in the last Parliament. They do not know how bad it was. They do not know how good this is. They do not realize how much they are getting out of this. If they had been here before, their complaints would be cut in half today.
The President of the Treasury Board introduced changes in the expenditure management system so that committees can become more involved in the spending priorities of the government. We are about to embark on that process in the committees very shortly.
We have opened up the process. We have given more power to committees and I need not recite for members opposite the changes to the budget process where the finance committee travels Canada to hear Canadians' views on the budget.