Mr. Speaker, I understand that everybody will be so spellbound with what I have to say that the Chair actually wants me to stop partway through, so they can digest it, and then start again after question period.
We are in fact debating the Canadian Alliance amendment to split the bill. As the government is wont to do, it has made this such an omnibus bill covering so many different areas and even different jurisdictions that this is actually a bill that is about one-third transport and two-thirds justice. Yesterday in the justice committee we raised the fact that we are faced with dealing with a bill that actually has more justice items in it than transport items. That is why we suggested that it should be split into two bills, one for the transport portion of it and one for the justice portion of it.
What is even more alarming is the fact that the government wants to fast track the bill. In fact, the Prime Minister has publicly vowed that he will fast track Bill C-55. To hell with debate and to hell with democracy, which is something we have already seen in the House, he wants to fast track the bill and ram it through parliament. Those are his own words.
Instead, we say that if the government thinks there is merit in this and if we think there are a lot of problems, problems that have just been disclosed in part by the last speaker from the NDP, let us look at it, but let us put it into its proper sections and let us take the time that is necessary, not only to debate it in the House but to have good public input.
The very thought that the government would want to fast track a bill that the privacy commissioner himself has stated should alarm law-abiding citizens is a reason for not fast tracking it. However, at times the Prime Minister likes to fast track things. For example, the Prime Minister fast tracked buying over $100 million worth of new jets for himself and his cabinet colleagues to fly around in, despite the fact that the people responsible for the present jets say they are perfectly serviceable. He fast tracked it to the point that he even skipped by his own cabinet and rammed this thing through just before the Easter break.
Let us look at some of the things the Prime Minister perhaps could fast track and has not. He could fast track buying new helicopters for the military. After all, the military is flying 40 year old machines. That is the equivalent of the cabinet driving around Parliament Hill in flathead Fords. We see the government trading their cars in quite regularly. They are not driving flathead Fords. They are not even driving very old models, yet the government expects the military to be flying around in 40 year old helicopters. One of these days one of those helicopters is going to end up at Rockcliffe. When a former serviceman takes his grandchildren out to see one of these things and tells them that he actually flew it, they will not believe him. In fact, one of the ironies is that in some cases we currently have members of the armed forces flying these machines whose own grandfathers may have flown those machines in the Canadian military as well.
As well, the Prime Minster has not fast tracked obtaining proper uniforms for our fighting forces in Afghanistan. The government loves to throw it at us that we are not supporting our troops, that we are not recognizing the incredible job they do. We do. We recognize that our troops are over there in jungle uniforms buying beige paint to splash on their uniforms. With the full approval of their senior officers, our troops are putting beige paint on their uniforms and on some of their weapons in order to camouflage themselves, and it is paint, not even clothes dye, because paint is what they can get. When we see the Canadian forces go into action in Afghanistan we can always tell who they are, even in a multi-country force, because they are the ones in the dark uniforms in the desert.
Also, the government has not fast tracked legislation dealing with child pornography. We still have people such as John Sharpe in British Columbia, who says that he has artistic merit in the pornography that he writes and who is still able to publish books glorifying this type of pornography.
The Prime Minister is also not fast tracking any action on the softwood lumber issue. In fact, the minister responsible for this has gone so far as to say there is no real need for alarm because nobody has really lost a job. It is just an industry readjustment. The government is so far behind in its thinking that it is quite unbelievable.