Mr. Speaker, it is very interesting as we are undertaking the continuation of this throne speech to take a look at the number of things that have changed and the number of things that have not changed.
Clearly the things that have not changed have been on the Liberal side. One of the most interesting things last year, when Canada came within 50,000 votes of no longer being Canada, was the reaction of the Liberals to that situation.
There is an old saying that if it ain't broke, don't fix it, but in this case it is broken and we must fix it.
There are three heads on a very bad penny here, the Progressive Conservatives, the Liberals and the NDP. None of them have any new ideas. None of them are bringing any new information. None of them are taking any role of leadership to do things differently.
My colleague mentioned that the Prime Minister, in the three days before the vote, came up with the absolutely brilliant but totally discredited idea of distinct society. He did that and then brought it into the House of Commons. He forced it through the House of Commons. He also wanted to have a veto for Quebec.
Not being able to do that, we now have a veto for five regions which fundamentally gives a total constriction of any ability to ever change our country and the way we govern ourselves. That is what the Prime Minister has done. One of his more imaginative ministers, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, the Deputy Prime Minister, wants to return to 1967 to rekindle the wonderful national spirit we had. She has come out with the fly a flag program which was originally, according to an official in her department, going to be costing between $6 million and $7 million.
As was reported in the Globe and Mail , suddenly they have turned around and said that it was going to be $23 million. We then had the brilliant news the other day that it was going to be $8 million less than that. All we know is that we have over 600,000 flags being distributed willy-nilly all over the country.
As a matter of fact, there is an article in Le Devoir today that indicates that 15 of these flags were sent to people who had no interest in having the Canadian flag. The writer of the article says: ``Thank you very much, but I am going to put it in my bottom drawer''. My office is being inundated by people who are either indicating they have received flags, do not want them or have sent them back. In fact, my office has been receiving these flags to return to the minister.
This is the old vision. This is the cheerleader we have for a heritage minister. What of a new vision, a new vision that the Reform Party has? I quote the leader of the Reform Party:
For the past few decades, Canada has been governed by an ideology which holds that an overpowering, overspending central government is the answer to every problem, including that of national unity. The Reform Party is not afraid to fundamentally rethink the way our government works. Through decentralization and a greater emphasis on local responsibility, we believe we have a realistic plan that will build a stronger, more united Canada. It will help us achieve our common objective of keeping Quebec in the federation.
Let us take a look at what happened in the lead-up to the last referendum. In 1995, of the people who were surveyed, this from the Globe and Mail dated October 30, 1995, 25 per cent of the people in Quebec still believe they could elect federal members of Parliament. Almost 30 per cent believed that they would be able to keep economic ties such as they have right now and over half believed they could keep their Canadian passports.
These things are not a given. They would have to be discussed and agreed to by all the people of Canada. There was no discussion about what was going to be happening should they determine that they were going to be voting in favour of separating from Canada. There was no discussion, no contingency plan and no explanation to the people of Quebec when they voted in favour separation what their vote would actually mean.
At that time, it must be noted, if we take a slice in time leading up to the referendum, the Reform Party was being vilified by all the old-line parties because this was a new way of thinking and they could not really get their mind around a new way of thinking. We were being vilified for saying: "Just a second, why are we not having an exposure to the people of Quebec as to what the facts are? Why are we not letting the people of Quebec know that this is not a free ride?"
We are being vilified because they think we are planning for their separation. No. I and my party are committed federalists who demand that this country stay together and we will do everything we can to keep this country together. However, it will be kept together by truth, by exposure of ideas and by straight, candid discussions.
In a new Canada that the Reform Party would see, we would see a reduction in the size of tax requirements of the federal government. Right now in our nation, people through an underground economy and all sorts of devious means are walking away from their tax obligations because they believe taxes are too high and they do not want to be a part of it.
Let me make it clear, particularly to anybody in the revenue department, that I am in no way condoning the actions of people who walk away from their tax obligations. I am simply reporting that there is a tax fatigue within the country and people are doing everything they can to get away from it. It is becoming a serious problem in the way in which we relate to each other.
We would refocus the federal government's powers on 10 areas of national importance. We would reform federal institutions to make them more democratically accountable and sensitive to regional interests. We would introduce a triple E Senate, one that would give a counterbalance to the House of Commons, which is after all at least something of a form of representation by population. Ontario and Quebec have two-thirds of the seats concentrated in this place. A triple E Senate, through its equal representation, would give regional compensation to the power of the House of Commons. We would decentralize other governmental powers to give all provinces the freedom and resources to develop as their citizens choose.
Quebec is not the only distinct society. When we look around the country, Quebec has the distinctiveness of its language, but truly, are the Acadians not as much a distinct society? Truly, are the people who arrived in northern Alberta from Europe in the early 1900s not a distinct society? What we are talking about here is the demand, and a very worthy demand on the part of people across Canada to have more say and to get out from under the stultifying
umbrella of the federal government. That is the positive side and the direction in which we want to go.
On the other side of the coin we would also say that secession negotiations must respect the principles of democratic legitimacy, the rule of law and the interests of Canada. The right of Canadians within a seceding province to remain part of Canada and to petition Parliament for that purpose must be respected.
I quote a gentleman, Gilles St-Laurent from Quebec City, Quebec: "I believe the people of Quebec would like to have more control over their own affairs and less influence from Ottawa. And that is why I think that Reform's plan to give more powers to the provinces is one of the most likely to keep Quebec in the federation".