Mr. Speaker, I will be fairly brief but I feel I have to rise to correct some perceptions.
The member for Red River talked a long time about the perceptions of our plan in Ottawa. I can only say that we have some little green men in the House who have trouble with perception. They occupy the benches of the Reform Party.
Surely nobody would expect the government not to follow through on its agenda, particularly when we are following a federal election. We went forward, put our plan to the electorate and were elected on it. To make such comments about the Canada pension is totally wrong.
It is totally preposterous for members of the opposition to talk about perceptions and the brain drain after we tabled the budget in the House very recently. We did a whole lot to try to counter the brain drain. We put forward the millennium scholarship fund and extended money to the granting councils.
The reality is that the electorate has the perception and elected the government because it expected that it would carry out its promises.
I do not want to get in on a long discussion about perceptions and what kind of perception is given to the country when people say they will not move into Stornoway and the next thing they do is move into Stornoway, or what it means when people say they came to Ottawa to do politics differently and to establish a better decorum and then exhibit virtually the worst decorum in the House of Commons.
The perception of the Canadian public in terms of the job we are doing as a government in carrying out our mandate is good. All I can say to the member is that he really wants to check out his perception to make sure that he, as the government has, undertakes the kind of official opposition role the public expects from the official opposition.