Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this debate and especially to follow the member for Elk Island. I can honestly say that the member represents for me probably 90% of the reason I could never ever be associated with the Reform Party. I am a passionate interventionist.
The member talked about how we are ramming this bill through. The bill is not being rammed through.
Today the Government of Canada and the people of Canada are receiving the MAD treatment from the Reform Party. Many years ago, when I had the great privilege and pleasure of working for the then Prime Minister Trudeau, we would refer to the MAD treatment, maximum administrative delay. That is what the people of Canada are experiencing today. Whenever an opposition party essentially wants to delete every clause of a bill and thereby delete the bill, that is the MAD treatment.
Passionate interventionism is what I believe in. There is not a riding or a sector of this country's economy that would be alive and well today if we had not had some form of government intervention.
The member talked about tragedies. One of the real tragedies of the House of Commons has been the impact that that opposition party has had on so many other issues where we have watered down the Government of Canada activism, the Government of Canada presence in this country. That is part of the reason we have separatism, but fortunately that party is on the way out now. We can see that party has been so distracted lately because the economy is coming back. It is starting to lose its separatist foundation in that province.
I want to quote one of our national treasures. There was an article in the Globe and Mail on Saturday, March 6. I want to quote one of our great Canadian hockey treasures, Frank Mahovlich. The article is by Graham Fraser. It states:
But Mahovlich has a bleak view of the game he once mastered and charmed.
“The head office is now in New York,” he said in his radio interview. “We have lost this game. The game is not what it used to be. I mean, we've always changed the rules to suit everybody else. When we played the Russians, back in 1972, we weren't playing our rules, we were playing the Russian rules, the Olympic rules. So the game is not Canadian any more. We've lost it. Whether we can get it back or not, I don't know. We'll have to wait and see”.
The members of the Reform Party have tried in so many areas to diminish the Canadian content, to diminish the Canadian presence, to diminish the Canadian activism. If there was ever an area where Canada's House of Commons should be standing on guard, it is in the area of culture.
I consider that Bill C-55 is really not an overly aggressive attempt to keep this country's magazine industry alive. I cannot understand for the life of me why the Reform Party is trying to put a spike in the spirit and the heart of this bill.
The member said to us that we think Canadian magazines cannot survive on their own. The bottom line is, I believe that. I believe they cannot survive on their own.
Have the Reform Party members ever competed against the American muscle with all its money and influence? When was the last time? Let us ask any Canadians who are listening to this debate. Do not listen to me. Walk down to the local grocery store, walk down to the local variety store or go into the local bookstore and look at those magazine racks. Better than 50% of the magazines—