Madam Speaker, allow me to be the first member to make reference to your presence as the new Deputy Speaker of this House.
In response to the representative of the Reform Party, I must state that I am somewhat astonished to see in this House today that the Reform Party is concerned about will form the official Opposition and who will be vice-chairs, when we will be engaged this week in a debate of the highest importance on the budget speech. I must say that I would have expected instead that the members of this House would have focussed their energies, or husbanded their energies, for addressing the real problems Canada is facing, that is the attitude the Liberals across the way have taken toward managing the debt. In this connection, I believe that the two parties on this side can combine their actions to force the government to move, or
at least to reflect. But I have trouble understanding how there can be a drawn out debate on the choice of vice-chairs.
I thought Canada operated according to a certain tradition, with this or that responsibility for the official Opposition. That this was normal and that was how we operated.
As far as I am concerned, I can tell you that being from Quebec , yes, and I have nothing to hide in this regard, being a representative of the Bloc Quebecois, I defend a certain ideology, whether certain people like it or not, and it is important for the rest of Canada to know that. If we have become the Official Opposition and have certain related responsibilities to assume, that is not our choice but how democracy works. So I have difficulty understanding why there is this protracted debate. It seems to me to be superfluous.
Once again, as Mr. Bouchard himself has said in this House, perhaps the Reform Party is short on ambition. Rather than focussing on becoming the official Opposition, rather than seeking what goes along with that position, they ought instead to be seeking to combat the true scourge here, in other words attacking the Liberals, the Government. But no. It might be said that they have set their sights too low.
I would like to again express my astonishment on this, but this time about both sides.
While the third party in the House tries to diminish the importance of the work of the official opposition by saying that you do not have to be a member of the official opposition to be vice-chairman in this House, the new Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs-I think I am allowed to mention his name since he has not been elected yet, Stéphane Dion-says: "The distinct society status is not really a special status and will not bring any special powers".
The third party in the House says that the official opposition does not really have the attributes of the official opposition. At the same time, a government spokesperson says that what was voted on before Christmas does not really mean what it means.
So allow me to express my surprise as a member of the Bloc Quebecois and to ask: How is it that the bills that were voted on do not mean what they mean? How is it that the attributes of the official opposition, such as the office of vice-chairman, do not necessary apply because we are the official opposition? Maybe the time has come to tackle the real issue, to call a spade a spade, to go back to the basics, to look at who built Canada, that is the notion of two founding peoples, to try to understand and to respect the rules.
There are a lot of things I do not agree with in the way Canada is run, but I respect the rules. I hope that the third party in the House will respect the rules also and that we will close this debate which, I must say, I find totally useless. I hope we can get on with what is important, that is to prepare our response to the budget speech.