Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Skeena for that question.
There is a paucity of legislation on anything meaningful coming from the government. It is interesting that even on the Senate side the senators are saying “There is nothing for us to do”. I guess that is why the government gives them bills to start there. In other words there is no legislation coming in a timely fashion from the House of Commons, going through the committee structure, going through first, second and third readings, going through report stage amendments, going through votes and off to the Senate.
This pushes the level of credulity almost to the maximum. Even the Senate says there is not enough for it to do. I thought counting flowers on the wall did not bother them at all over there. I thought there was general glee when there was little to do. In fact most Canadians wonder what it is they do there anyway.
They are even complaining there is nothing to do. The reason is—and the viewers at home should know this as well—the legislative agenda of the government is so slim and so weak that not only in the Senate but even in the House of Commons we find ourselves, I would not say killing time but looking for the visionary type bills that can move the country forward. Instead we have housekeeping bills. Again, we are happy to pass the bill, but would it not be better to have a plethora of meaningful bills which would help form a vision of where we want the country to go?
The difference between dreaming and a vision is that dreams are just idle chatter and conversation but a vision is a how-to plan with meat on its bones that can make something happen, that can make the country better. When we do not have meat on the bones we have slim pickings, to use that analogy. We are faced with that again in this session.
It is like the government got elected a year ago and now says “Hey, we got elected. Does anybody know what we should do?” It has been running around since then saying “I am not sure what we should do but here is a housekeeping bill on allowing them to have a physical transaction under depository notes and bills that could be computer driven and not just an actual piece of paper that we hand to one another. There is a visionary statement. That will bring us rip snorting into the 21st century. What will we do with all the vision contained in these bills?”
The truth is that it is just weak. It is flaccid. It has palsy. It has no zip to it. It is viagraless. It has no potency. It has nothing to give it life. Weak, flaccid, limp bills kind of go through the system but do not really have any effect. It is thin soup and slim pickings. It means that we deal with these issues because we have to.
We will deal with them, but there is nothing visionary in this legislative agenda. That is unfortunate because Canadians would grasp on to that. If they could figure out where the government was going they would gladly help it get there. The problem is this bill, notwithstanding the whole legislative slim pickings, does not give enough of a vision statement that Canadians can rally around the flag, so to speak, to take us forward. That is too bad.
The Senate is not helping. It is just trying to get work to do over there and it has said as much. It does not have enough to do. It is wondering what it is supposed to do. It is probably even wondering what its purpose is any more. Besides all that the government has a weak legislative agenda. It is not a visionary agenda. It is the kind of thing that it is difficult to get Canadians excited about when this is the bill we are to stay late tonight to pass hopefully in a few minutes.