Madam Speaker, I am going to dedicate my remarks primarily to the issue of private members' business.
I am also delighted to follow the member for St. Albert so that I can also put on the record some of my observations about that fuel rebate before I go into the main text of my speech.
I would point out to the member for St. Albert that I have an older single woman in her eighties living in the village who lost her husband many years ago. She lives in my village. She lives in an Insulbrick house. Her total income is about $12,000 a year. It is only old age security. If the government had not acted as fast as possible on that fuel rebate, she would have felt the cold.
Moreover, low income Canadians who do not pay for their own home heating fuel, who are tenants of landlords, also benefit from this because, as the Liberal member mentioned, what happens with landlords is when the fuel price goes up they pass on the cost to their tenants.
When those tenants are low income tenants, they are going to feel that pinch. My view is that the government did exactly the right thing. It did away with all the potential red tape that would have come from the conservative proposals we heard opposite. What it did was it got it out as fast as possible. Obviously it was imperfect but at least 80% or 90% of Canadians who needed that rebate, whether they needed it directly or indirectly, did benefit.
Let us just get it straight. If the government did act in a compassionate fashion, and if it had taken the course that was proposed by the Canadian Alliance, then the people like the one that I just mentioned, people who want to live alone but live independently and have small means, they would have suffered. I can tell you, Madam Speaker, the snow is deep in Ontario as well as out west and as well as on the east coast.
I really want to dedicate my remarks to the issue of private members' business. This is relevant to the Speech from the Throne because at various times during the speeches the issue of opportunities for MPs has come up and whether or not backbench MPs in particular and opposition MPs can have a meaningful legislative impact on the House.
I think what has been missing from the debate is the opposition has tended to suggest that there have been no attempts at reform, no attempts at expanding the opportunities of backbench MPs. Well in fact, precisely the opposite has occurred.
I would like, for the benefit of Canadians, to just give a little history of private members' business since 1993 when the Liberals came to power after the Conservatives. If the House will recall, we came back with quite a large majority.
Theoretically, when a government has a large majority, it can do whatever it pleases in the sense that it really can afford to ignore the backbench, but in fact, this government did not.
At the very outset, this government, at least as far as its own members were concerned, decreed that all private members' business would be subject to free votes on this side. As a government, we cannot dictate to what opposition leaders say to their own MPs, but on this side from 1993 onward it was free votes.
Second, the government invited, not initially willingly, but after a little while the government invited private members' business from this side, as a matter of fact, from anyone, of more substance.
Prior to 1993, ordinarily a private member's bill would deal with an extremely non-controversial, even trivial topic, something that the government did not have to worry about, such as a name change or things that cost the government no money, that would have no potential negative political impact.
One of the things that changed after 1993 was that the government showed a willingness to accept private members' bills that dealt with more substance. Indeed, we started out in that line and there were some notable successes.
I remind the House on all sides that—