Mr. Speaker, the opposition day motion by the former Reform Party, as I understand it, calls for an audit of all government programs to be tabled in a more prompt fashion and for better and easier access to information.
Our caucus does not disagree with either of those points. They are both valid points. However, after reading the motion this morning at our caucus meeting my first reaction was that it was a waste of a good opposition day. What a terrible thing to squander an opportunity to hold the government accountable on so many pressing issues. What a shame that party is so devoid of ideas that it has to nitpick about relatively insignificant things when there are so many pressing issues that we could be talking about in the House of Commons today.
After reading the motion I felt that it was very poorly crafted. I could hardly understand what it meant, and once I did understand, I thought it was a shame. We could have used this time today. It must be one of the luxuries of being the official opposition in that it has more opportunities for these opposition day motions. We do not treat our opposition days lightly. If my party had been given the opportunity to choose the topic of debate for a whole day in this hallowed Chamber, I would like to think that we would have found something of more significance.
We could talk for a day about a national housing strategy and about being the only developed nation in the world that has no national housing strategy. We could talk about a commitment to full employment and about putting the whole country back to work. Would that not be a theme worth dedicating one day of debate to?
There are so many issues. We could talk about saving our national health care system. Why are we not talking about that in this golden opportunity we have to choose the topic of debate? We could talk about cleaning up the environment. How often do we hear that debated in the House of Commons while we, as Canadians, are busy poisoning our own nest to the point where we will not be able to live here anymore if we do not do something about it? That is not being debated in the House of Commons today.
Frankly, we are talking about nitpicking. We are talking about little incidental administrative details. Is that the worst thing that party can think of to accuse the ruling party of, that they are poor administrators? How cruel. What a condemning comment. What a waste of an opportunity and it saddens me.
I will speak to the motion because, as I said, we do not disagree with the idea of more accountability and transparency, although those words are getting to be such a cliché that I am not sure they have any meaning anymore. They are the two most overused words in the House of Commons.
We agree with the whole concept of increased accountability on spending on government programs. We do agree with the former Reform Party. What does one become when one is no longer a reformer? If one is no longer interested in that anymore, one must be a conformer. The opposite of a reformist is a conformist. Maybe that is what we should be calling them now.
We do come from diametrically opposed positions. Our party and that party may agree on this one issue of increased access to information, et cetera, but it is very transparent. The one thing that is truly transparent is what motivated the Reform Party to debate this motion today. It is not even a call for greater accountability. It is that it disagrees with government spending on social programs.
What it boils down to and the reason the Reform Party keeps hammering mercilessly away at government spending is that it disagrees with public investment in a human resources strategy at any level. It disagrees with public spending whether it is for human resources, income maintenance or access to services for the disabled. Any public spending is bad. All things private are good. If one tears down the former Reformers' political ideology, that is about as basic as it can be put. Public bad; private good. No more public spending is really what their message is.
We disagree wholeheartedly because our party believes that government not only has a role in public spending for social services but it has an obligation. One of the finest things we do as government is that we do our best to distribute the wealth to care for those who need it most in our communities.
The one thing that is very obvious and transparent about the former Reform Party is that if it ever did have the authority, heaven forbid—