Mr. Speaker, you should come and join the opposition benches. Maybe you could get appointed to the Chair.
I was at promise No. 12 where there was a billion dollar pay-off to get three provinces to co-operate on a co-ordination of tax policies between the federal and provincial governments.
I could go on, there are a lot of promises here. There is promise No. 19 which deals with NAFTA. We do not need to talk about it because that has already happened.
I want to talk about promise No. 26 which states: "We will better prepare for the transition from school to the workplace, provide a constructive outlet for the skills and talents of younger Canadians, the innocent victims of Canada's prolonged recession, enhance the opportunity for job training and improve literacy and numeracy skills of Canadian workers and improve access to employment for women and single parents by making quality child care more available". There are so many broken promises in that one promise alone that I do not know where to start.
Let us talk about youth unemployment. Conservative estimates have the unemployment rate for young Canadians at 18 per cent. One of my colleagues mentioned that there are 1.4 million Canadians unemployed at the current time. The member for Broadview-Greenwood indicated that two million Canadians are currently unemployed.
Then we could talk about all the day care spaces that were promised by the Liberal government. The Liberals had no hope of ever fulfilling that promise yet they made it to young single mothers and others who needed help with child care. What an irresponsible thing to do. How can Liberal MPs look their constituents in the face when they make promises they do not have a hope of keeping?
That is in contrast to our fresh start proposal which recognizes child care whether it is in the form of day care or care in the home or care by other trusted caregivers. There is no discrimination based on the type of child care. That would create far more child care than the broken Liberal promises could ever have hoped to accomplish even if they had been able to keep their promises.
There are pages of broken promises here. There is No. 41: "A Liberal government, if it can obtain the agreement of the provinces, will be committed to expanding existing child care in Canada by 50,000 new quality child care spaces each year that follows a year
of 3 per cent economic growth up to a total of 150,000 new spaces". A broken promise again.
Here is a kept promise, No. 56. Every once in a while we come across a promise that the Liberals kept and it is quite notable when we do hit one: "The Liberal government will enhance the role of the trade commissioner service by adding to its staff qualified technology and science attachés who can gather information for diffusion back in Canada and identify opportunities for Canadian exports abroad". Here again the Liberals were able to add some positions and increase the spending of government. We are not sure how effective it has been but they were able to keep that promise.
I must mention promise No. 71: "A Liberal government will work with the provinces and the territories to provide Canada's natural resource industries with greater certainty by co-ordinating a specific system of land access, settling aboriginal land claims and resolving delays and uncertainties in current regulatory processes".
At the Liberal convention last weekend, aboriginal people were outside burning the red book because the Liberal government failed to keep its promises to aboriginal people. The aboriginals were pulling the red book apart page by page, using it to light a bonfire. That again is in stark contrast to Reform's fresh start proposals based on our aboriginal policy task force, which consulted with aboriginal and non-aboriginal people alike to put forward some very solid proposals.
There are a hundred and some promises here. I am trying to get to the last one. "A Liberal government will also expand the rights of Parliament to debate major Canadian foreign policy initiatives such as the deployment of peacekeeping forces, the rights of Canadians to regular and serious consultation on foreign policy issues".
We all know that the take note debates happened after the decision was made. It was another slap in the face of Parliament just like we have been slapped around by not having the Liberals fulfil their promise of appointing two deputy speakers from the opposition benches. This has to change. The Liberals are not going to change it. The alternative is to start with a fresh start, a new opportunity for Canadians, one that is offered by Reform.