Madam Speaker, no one can ever fault the Liberal members for a shortage of gall. We have just listened to the hon. member across the way run through a list of how many dozens of charities were hurt by this strike, dozens of them. I saw in the Globe and Mail this morning an ad from the Sick Children's Hospital in Toronto saying that people can still make donations by faxing them and phoning in and that kind of thing, but because of the strike it could not do its typical fund-raising letter.
The hon. member across the way has pointed out that this has cost the economy billions of dollars. People have been laid off. What the hon. member forgot to mention is that this whole thing was preventable, that the government had it within its power to prevent this strike from happening in the first place.
It could have accepted the advice of the Reform party and allowed a new settlement mechanism, the mechanism of final arbitration, to prevent this type of mess. But no, it knew better. It thought it was better to let the people of Canada suffer through two weeks of a postal strike, to allow all these charities to be deprived of the ability to raise funds for all these worthy causes as we approach Christmas, and now the Liberals turn around and pat themselves on the back for having the courage after two weeks to legislate striking postal workers back to work.
This is circular arguing. It is absolutely ridiculous.
I ask the hon. member if he is going to take credit for the government legislating these people back to work, will he also take responsibility for the damage that he and his government have caused by not acting sooner?