Mr. Speaker, I have listened with interest to the rather fiery, freewheeling and somewhat frivolous rhetoric coming from the hon. member.
We had seen a lot of this mean-spirited, mealy-mouthed attack throughout the debate but I have yet to hear anything productive from the hon. member. It is the same old Reform wrecking ball approach, tar everyone with the same brush, and throw in some snide references to the Conservatives and previous governments. He will be the last person to be intellectually honest and admit that there were previous governments that did good things for rural Canada.
The Progressive Conservative Party did a lot to help the west. It brought in free trade, put in infrastructure such as the Confederation Bridge, put in projects such as the frigate project in Saint John, New Brunswick. It helped people in regions who needed the government's help.
What are we hearing from this member and from his party to help build a targeted strategy for rural Canada? What are we hearing from him? We are hearing some vague references to everything that is wrong in the country and the fact that his party brought up questions of this for the past five or ten years.
Thankfully it has never been in government where it had to make hard decisions, where it had to spend political capital to get things done, as did the previous Progressive Conservative government.
It is all about besmirching people's names, tarring the record and repeating baseless allegations about people's reputations. That is what we get from this member constantly.
Why do we not hear something productive about what we can do for regions that need help? Regions like his own. What will we do in terms of improving relations between the provinces and the federal government to do away with things like clawbacks from provinces such as Nova Scotia, which has its offshore oil and gas revenues clawed back by the federal government? What will we do about fuel tax money that is being taken out roads instead of being put in or the ways in which we can improve upon legislation, improve upon the tax regimes that hurt students and entrepreneurs? What sort of positive initiatives could we hear from this member?
I fully expect that he will ignore the question. He will get up and make some other snide comment about a previous government. Let us hear something positive from his mouth for a change.