Mr. Speaker, the precise position of the Reform Party with respect to the social union reform of the federation has been laid out in some considerable detail in our proposed new Canada act, a copy of which the hon. member opposite can find at our web site at www.reform.ca, or by writing to my office postage free. I would be happy to send him a copy of the new Canada act. It endorses in large part the recommendations of the premiers on the social union but goes further in other areas. It is not identical, but we do believe that social union is a major addition to the debate.
The hon. member said he was going to address both issues, one of which was timing. All day we have heard from the Liberal members that the December 31 deadline in our motion was unrealistic. We have listened to the concerns of various members opposite. We want to be co-operative in this.
This morning, we supported a motion from the Conservative Party to extend the deadline.
Just now I sought unanimous consent for a motion to extend the deadline to later in the year 1999.
Perhaps the hon. member opposite has a better idea about a deadline, but some kind of deadline is necessary if we are going to stop the vacillation of the federal government. That is all we are saying.
This does not come arbitrarily from the official opposition. It comes from the premiers themselves. Paragraph 6 of the framework on the social union says the “premiers stressed that negotiations should now proceed with a view to concluding a draft agreement by the end of the year”. That is where the idea came from, not from ourselves.
I would once again invite the Liberal members opposite to reconsider our support for an earlier motion on the part of the Conservative member to extend the proposed deadline. We are not stuck. We do not want to split hairs here. We do not want this very constructive motion to be not supported because of arbitrary deadlines. We are prepared to be flexible. But at the end of the day, as the premiers indicated, we do need a deadline to ensure the government does not endlessly vacillate, prevaricate and obfuscate.