Mr. Speaker, it is actually amusing to watch the Liberals' response to the motion put forward by their House leader earlier. The reason we are here today is that the Liberal government was caught in a very visible way last night at a practice it has been doing since the 1993 election when the Liberals were elected as government. That practice has been to continually show utter contempt and disdain for the opposition parties in this House. That has been shown very clearly on an ongoing basis by their lack of presence in the House.
In other words, what the Liberals were saying to the opposition parties as we debated issues that were important to all the people of Canada was that they simply did not care enough to be here. They do not care enough about what we are saying to even show up in the House. This is evidence today. We are debating the Liberals' own motion and there are only three Liberal members in the House.
I know where two of them are. The deputy whip is looking for a safe place to hide today, no doubt. The House leader is out on a massive pout trying to figure out how he can get even with those dastardly Reformers who caught them in the act last night of their utter contempt for this House of Commons and the opposition party.
The hon. member for Bourassa spoke so loudly earlier about the presence of one Reform member at many of the committee hearings. The simple answer to that is that one Reform member can handle six Liberals in debate any time of the week. Mr. Speaker, you will like this. One member of the Reform Party appropriately handled the entire Liberal government last night. One of us is worth a thousand of them.
The House leader certainly put forward this motion because the Liberals got caught last night. They got caught with no members in the House. Mr. Speaker, as you well know and could probably confirm, this is typical of what we see during debate most times. We see a goodly amount of opposition members while across the way we see no government members. We certainly see no ministers when we are talking about issues. That shows they do not really care about what the people of Canada who are represented by this side of the House have to say.