The minister spoke to us about Canada's great success, when most western countries are in recession. That has been achieved by this government under the leadership of the current Prime Minister.
Today, the Bloc members want to defeat the current government led by the current Prime Minister in the House of Commons. Today, under the Prime Minister's leadership, this country has brought in six balanced budgets. Better still, the Prime Minister created almost three million jobs while in office. The future looks very bright.
Canada is no longer in danger of becoming a third world country, as the Wall Street Journal , I think, claimed years ago. We are now known as the Northern Tiger.
There is much more. We have cut income tax by $100 billion. This is the largest reduction in income tax ever in Canada. Who voted against these cuts? Those same members opposite. Believe it or not, they voted against these cuts.
To make Canada an economic leader in the 21st century, we invested in science, research and development and created the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Genome Canada. Once again, in most cases, the opposition voted against these initiatives.
Thanks to the connecting Canadians strategy and our community access program, we have helped make Canada a world leader in high technology. This government is responsible for these achievements, which the members opposite choose to ignore. Today, they want to defeat this government with this non-confidence motion.
The hon. members opposite want to talk about other government programs. Naturally, I have a long list here, and thanks to their encouragement, I can name more of them. I could talk about the billions of dollars invested in modernizing infrastructure. Who can forget the excellent initiative of our government and our Prime Minister to upgrade the highway to Saguenay, for example.
I remember a few Bloc members who said that this announcement would never be made. It was, thanks to the hon. member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord and, of course, our Prime Minister and our cabinet. This is just one of many initiatives with which the hon. members opposite are familiar. In fact, the day this announcement was made, the other side of the House did not find much to criticize.
To fight homelessness in Canadian cities, we established a strategy to prevent homelessness.
To prepare our farmers for the 21st century, we created a new agricultural policy framework.
We have invested in our environment. In fact, the Bloc Quebecois just congratulated us for supporting and advancing the Kyoto protocol.
This morning, the Bloc Quebecois asked this government to step down, but congratulated it for its accomplishments such as the Kyoto protocol. They also recognize in advance that the Prime Minister's successor will be from the same political party. This is paradoxical.
If an opposition party moves a motion that might defeat the government, this is usually because it wants to replace the government itself. That is the parliamentary convention. The Prime Minister is appointed by the Governor General to form and lead a government. What is odd this time is that the opposition is saying that the Prime Minister and his government should step down, but that this government is so deserving of praise that it should be replaced by another government from the same political party. This is unheard of.
I challenge you, who are so objective in these matters, to find another example in the history of Canada where a non-confidence motion was presented with the hope of replacing the government with the same political party. I have never heard of such a thing. This is extremely inconsistent, as the deputy government whip says.
I could list other accomplishments, for there have been many in recent years.
We are certainly not finished. We intend to continue, of course, with the support of Canadians, to provide good governance or, as Karen Carpenter once put it, we have only just begun.
I want to get back to the issue of the confidence convention just in case the hon. member across the way is not 100% convinced, which I doubt, because of course he is a very understanding person and should understand these things readily.
Nevertheless, I refer to page 37 of Marleau and Montpetit. For the benefit of viewers, although I am not speaking to them but to the Chair, they might know that this is our procedural bible around here. It is what expresses how this place works. Page 37 states:
What constitutes a question of confidence in the government varies...Confidence is not a matter of parliamentary procedure, nor is it something on which the Speaker can be asked to rule. It is generally acknowledged, however, that confidence motions may be:
explicitly worded motions which state, in express terms, that the House has, or has not, confidence in the government;--
Now, what is the government, in parliamentary terms? It is the group of parliamentarians asked by one person to form a ministry: the Prime Minister. The Governor General does not ask a group of people to form a government. The Governor General asks one person, in this case one man, the Prime Minister, the member for Saint-Maurice, to be the Prime Minister and to form a ministry.
So when the Prime Minister is asked to resign pursuant to a vote of this House, it is asking him and his ministry, in other words, his government, to resign. That is a fact. It cannot be otherwise. People across the way can consult as many constitutional experts as they like. I am sure they could not come up with a different conclusion.
Let me read from page 43 of Marleau and Montpetit:
When the government is defeated on a vote on a question of confidence in the House, the Prime Minister must...resign--
This is calling for the resignation of the Prime Minister and his government. This is not a matter of interpretation.
It is not my interpretation. I am reading from the rules of the House.
In one case, the government of Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, there is an historical precedent which I am sure will interest the Chair if not the members across the way. It was in 1873, and I quote, that the Conservative government of Sir John A. Macdonald, “embroiled in a scandal, resigned rather than face near-certain defeat” on a non-confidence vote.
In other words, in 1873, the Prime Minister, faced with a very serious question, knew that he would be defeated in the House and knew that this would cause the resignation of his government. Rather than have that occur, which would have occurred, as established, he chose to resign himself. This leaves no doubt. As early as 1873, then, the Prime Minister of Canada recognized that if he and his government were defeated on a motion that asked him to resign, it would cause a dissolution. There is no doubt about that. We have a tableful of procedural manuals that tell us that and nothing that tells us anything else.
Now the hon.member over the way is asking me to read the motion, and I will be pleased to do so. It says:
That, although the Prime Minister has a mandate and should be able to end it as he chooses—
True, and we certainly agree with that.
—given the democratic imbalance that currently prevails and that results in the government's decision-making occurring outside this House, and more broadly outside any public institution—
All that is their fancy introduction, and then we have the motion itself:
—this House calls upon the Prime Minister to leaveoffice—
In other words, to resign. The hon. member adds:
—as soon as possible after November 14, 2003
The member over the way is telling us that, if the PM is asked to step down, and a date is specified in the motion, it does not count. That is what he is saying, and a similar motion with no deadline, would.
Referring to the motion calling for John A. Macdonald's resignation, I do not know whether it proposed he do so after November 7. Surely he would not have stepped down if the date of November 7 had been specified in the motion.
That is what the members across the way are trying to tell us, and it is ridiculous. This motion calls upon the Prime Minister and his government to resign. If such a motion were passed by the House, it would be an expression of this House's non-confidence in the government. This is crystal clear. We know what the outcome would be.
If the members across the way wanted to congratulate the future leader of the Liberals, as they now claim they do, they could very easily have said that this House congratulates the future leader of the Liberal party, since he or she will surely be the next prime minister of Canada. In fact, that is in part what the motion says. To take away the non-confidence aspect, maybe they might want to just amend their motion to simply congratulate the Liberals.