Mr. Speaker, we have the same opinion of what they were saying. During the election campaign, I watched the news like everyone else. When the Prime Minister was campaigning, in your neck of the woods, I believe, he said this about Bill C-44 “We realized that it had not been a good decision; we ought not to have done so”. He was referring to the cuts to employment insurance eligibility.
The hon. member for Bourassa made a personal commitment to making corrections to the employment insurance legislation. Many people understood this to mean corrections that would improve the bill that had been introduced just before the election.
The result as far as concrete measures are concerned, with the exception of a few lines or phrases, is that nothing substantial has been changed. It is as if there had never been an election. It is as if those words had never been spoken.
That is why in the speech I have just given I said that, on occasion, I am beginning to understand why people are fed up with politics. When a person listens to what is said during election campaigns, particularly by the people across the floor, words that are not respected afterward, not taken any notice of, it is as if nothing has happened at all.
I would say, however, that the voters did a good thing by re-electing a number of opposition MPs, particularly the hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst, and all the others I have just named, to act as watchdogs over this government. I would have a word of caution for the hon. member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, for whom I still have considerable respect. When a person crosses the floor of this House, before he does so, he needs to be vigilant about maintaining his opinions, his values, the things he wants changed.