Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to what the government member had to say by way of comment about the exchange so far between the person who introduced the motion and the government. It goes back to something I had hoped to say earlier.
I think if we are going to call for a non-partisan debate and a non-partisan solution to this, we have to be non-partisan in our rhetoric on this topic.
Earlier when I made a remark off the record about what the member who introduced the motion had to say, it was in view of the fact that he had made a very partisan speech implying that Liberals and New Democrats and others did not care about the tragedy of drunk driving and the enormous sorrow, injury and the enormous costs to Canadian society. Then at the end of the speech, he urged us all to be non-partisan. I found that to be funny, in the tragic sense of the word. If we want to be non-partisan about this, let us admit that even though we may disagree with each other, we all care deeply about the victims of drunk driving.
I also counsel the government and everyone else who speaks in the debate in this regard. We cannot get up and call for a non-partisan debate after we have just finished hammering the hell out of the other parties for allegedly not caring about something we all obviously care about but may disagree with each other about how to deal with it.
I am inclined to be very supportive of what the Reform Party member said, but I take objection to the argumentation and the rhetoric in his speech in which he suggested that somehow the rest of us do not care about this. That is patently false and patently partisan.