Mr. Speaker, my colleague must have known that was my other speech I wish I could have given.
The fact of the matter is that the biggest indication of the democratic deficit in our country is the scandals and the exposure of corruption and cronyism and pork-barrelling that we have seen month after month for the last several years from the Liberal government. The fact is that the government does not have the proper accountability and transparency measures that would hold the Liberals to the standard that Canadians would want from them. What happens? Canadians give up. They feel the government does not speak for them, that it is not in tune with their wishes and their values, and so they disconnect. That is a real problem. We all see this as parliamentarians. The Liberals see it. We see it. Everyone sees it.
There are some very clear measures that we in the Canadian Alliance have been proposing since we came to this place. They would address the democratic deficit. They would reconnect what happens in this place with what Canadians want and what serves their interests truly.
They are things as simple as an ethics counsellor who could investigate these terrible instances of corruption and cronyism and report back to us as a parliament. Instead we have an ethics counsellor who has been completely hired by and controlled by the very government that needs to be held to account for that individual. Nobody in the country thinks that makes sense. In fact, the Liberals do not think it makes sense either because in their 1993 red book they promised there would be an ethics counsellor who would be completely independent and would report directly to parliament.
We gave the Liberals a chance to put that red book promise into effect. We brought forward a motion in the House last year saying that this House would put into place an ethics counsellor who would report to us as parliamentarians and not be controlled by the government. What happened was the Liberals stood on their feet and voted the motion down. It is no wonder Canadians say, “We don't have a government we can trust. We don't have a government that we believe is accountable”. The Liberals will not do anything to address it. That is why we have to have an alternative to replace them that can implement the measures we have been talking about for nine years in this place to really move us back into a true democracy.