Mr. Speaker, a famous author once wrote the answer to that, “—that is the question”.
In theory, the government is bound by the Speech from the Throne, which defines what the government 's legislative obligations will be. It is the program for this session of Parliament. But on many occasions, the government has been known to promise one thing and then do the opposite, or else nothing at all.
That is howthe Liberals got elected three time on the promise of correcting the EI program. The very worst of the broken promises was the one they made in their 1993 red book saying that, if elected, a Liberal government would restore public confidence in the political community. To restore this confidence, they implemented the sponsorship program that resulted in a $100 million scandal. That is probably their biggest broken promise.