Madam Speaker, I listened to the speech of the hon. member for St. John's East and I must say with a great deal less approbation than has been expressed by the hon. member for Elk Island.
I was reminded as a result of his speech of the very clear reason the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney was destroyed in the election of 1993. It was very obvious in the Charlottetown accord and in the Meech Lake accord that the government and obviously this member who was a supporter of the government at that time failed to listen to the people.
As he admits, in his area of St. John's the people spoke out overwhelmingly against Meech Lake and I presume the Charlottetown accord as they did in my region of Ontario. I was not a politician then, I was just an ordinary citizen, but in my village everyone was against Meech lake and everyone was against the Charlottetown accord. What was so distressing and the reason I got into politics was the fact that the politicians of the day, especially the Conservative politicians, would not listen to the people.
Now we have the irony of the member for St. John's East telling us that he again is not listening to the people in his riding when it comes to the amendments to term 17. He is saying he acknowledges that the majority of people in Newfoundland agree that a constitutional change must be brought forward to change the school system in Newfoundland, but he is prepared yet again to ignore the people because he knows better. He knows better, like his predecessors in the Conservative Party and the previous prime minister who I think now has a job in the United States. Good luck to him.
Does the member not think it is about time he recognized that he cannot ignore the majority? He speaks all this nonsense about looking after the rights of the majority when in fact he is only looking after his own party's platform. Does he not think it is time he listened to the people? Maybe his judgment is not correct.