Mr. Speaker, I am glad to hear the meetings were so well attended in Manitoba. In fact I have been talking about New Brunswick.
It seems to me those meetings were by invitation only. It seems as though we have to be members of a secret society to get in on some of these meetings that the Liberals are holding.
It would be really smart to put a general advertisement in the newspapers. If the Liberals are so concerned about finding out what westerners think, because he is back to the west now, surely to goodness they could make sure those meetings are well publicized and get everybody out to listen to their concerns.
When the hon. member talks about Liberals being the national party across the country, I might remind him of the seats that they lost in New Brunswick, to which I was just referring, and Nova Scotia. I must remember one of his friends, Doug Young, had some EI policies in New Brunswick. He knows exactly what happened to him, a very senior minister in cabinet who was gone after that.
Let us talk about the west because the hon. member seems obsessed with that. Let us talk about the seats that were lost in Manitoba by the Liberals. Let us look at Saskatchewan for just a minute. There is one lonely Liberal soul left from Saskatchewan. He has a wonderful tan today and he sits on the front bench, but irrelevant is irrelevant.
Let us move on to Alberta. Let us have a little look at Alberta for Liberals. They did not have a seat for a generation. They managed to squeak out four seats, probably purely by accident, in the 1993 election. Then we cut that in half to two seats, one of which I snapped away from a Liberal on June 2, 1997. It was a wonderful night in my life.
Let us look at B.C. if we are talking about a national party. There are precious few Liberals left. I dare the member and his Liberal friend from B.C. to put a public advertisement in the paper and invite people far and wide; not like the Minister of Justice, one of the two Liberals left in Alberta, who had a fundraising event recently and someone paid $800 to have supper with her.
What a steal, $800 to have supper with the justice minister. Guess who is not coming to dinner. It is the justice minister because she found out that one of the people who paid $800, one of the guests, was going to be the president of the National Firearms Association, a perfectly civil, polite fellow. Then Link Byfield was coming to supper too, the editor of the Alberta Report . What do we think happened? Guess who is not coming for supper. One of those Liberals. They paid $800 to have supper with her, but because she only wanted to have supper with Liberals, she would not have supper with them. If it is a truly national party and if it is proud of its stuff, it ought to have supper with anyone and brag about it.