The member says he would not brag about it but I do. I brag about it quite often and without any hesitation whatsoever.
There is a desire in the kind of heated atmosphere which is created in this chamber to solve every problem immediately. I used to enjoy debating some of my colleagues in the Reform Party by quoting a poster a friend of mine has in his office. It reads “For every complex problem there is a simple answer and it's wrong”. That is my feeling when the Reform Party raises the kind of debate it does in this House, quick, glib, easy criticisms to complex problems.
I admire our Prime Minister. If you think about it, politics is one of the few businesses where we tend to devalue experience. What we are reminded of every day is that we have a leader who understands the country better than any other person in this House and who has served the country longer than almost everybody else in this House.
When confronted with an issue he knows when to act and when to watch. He knows how to listen very carefully, not in a flashy way, not with a lot of bells and whistles, but very carefully step by step, issue by issue. He has gone about the work with the full support of this caucus in continuing to build upon the foundation that makes this the best country in the world.
When I was first elected in 1993 I recall that we had a very serious economic problem. We now have a surplus. That did not come about easily. It did not come about quickly. It did not come about magically. A lot of hard decisions were taken one by one, sticking to our guns and carefully keeping our eye on the target budget after budget. Even when we got into a surplus, we continued to exercise restraint and continued to be careful.
Look at the question of lack of co-operation with the provinces. Again, there was no national referendum. There was no big task force running around. We sat down and went issue by issue. When we needed to look at a national child benefit we sat down and negotiated a way that we could do that in co-operation with the provinces and the provinces signed on. We needed to look at the issue of training. We sat down an negotiated a series of agreements. Co-operation improves services to everybody.
I believe this was the crowning achievement. I worked in social services for a great many years. The social union framework represents to me the first time in as long as I have been working that we put aside all of the bickering and wrangling about jurisdiction and created an environment within which we could sit down, discuss, negotiate and come to an agreement on how we together can provide better services for the people in this country.
That basically is what Canada is. Canada is a partnership. It is a partnership of regions. It is a partnership of people. Partnership works extremely well.
Our government is able to do that because of the kind of work that is done by the member from Charleswood. Members in Quebec are doing this as well. The member from Mississauga is doing the one on youth entrepreneurship. We have had them on small business and on gas pricing. Members are constantly talking to Canadians, listening to what they have to say and trying to incorporate those ideas in all of the other opinions which they receive from all over the country. They bring that to caucus every week.
The Prime Minister sits in caucus every week to listen to us. He insists that people be there. He insists that it be an important forum for us to debate and discuss. Every single week we hear in that forum members saying what they are hearing in their regions over and over again.
I am a little saddened. I have to make some comments to my friends to the Bloc as well as my friends in the Reform. When I meet with my friends in the Bloc and with people in Quebec, I meet with people who are very interested in providing services and enhancing the quality of life for people living in their province. They are energetic, smart, interested and not afraid of the challenges in this world.
In western Canada we see the same thing. The picture brought into this House by the Reform Party is not the western Canada I know. Two of the wealthiest governments in the country exist in western Canada. The front page of the Globe and Mail showed my province of Manitoba as having the lowest unemployment rate in the country.
We are doing very well. We are doing very well in western Canada right now. We are doing it because people have found a way to put aside the bickering and the battling. They are focusing on making this an even better country.