Mr. Speaker, our critic in this field has just finished a cross-country tour, getting right down to work on the question of child care. In fact, he visited small rural communities and represents that type of northern Ontario region himself. He found that smaller communities right across the country had an enormous interest in a child care strategy.
The tragedy of this is that women, who primarily bear the burden of looking after children, are unable to work and make the contributions they might like to make, and unable to have the choices that they wish their families had. They were counting on the promises to be delivered. I think we have waited long enough.
The good news is that we have a minority Parliament, the kind of Parliament that produced our health care program, something put together by the New Democratic Party government, the CCF government in Saskatchewan. The fact that we have a pension plan emerged from a minority Parliament right here in the House. In fact, the principles of asymmetrical federalism were recognized at the time. It shows that it is possible to put together a strategy to address Canadians' needs no matter in what community or province they might happen to live, whether it's a large or small community.
We have the capacity as Canadians, if we work together, to address these issues and solve these problems. The question is, will we actually take the opportunity we have to realize these opportunities or will we squander it in a game of chicken.
I have looked at the amendments that have been proposed, for example. They are very interesting amendments. Of course the fundamental question is not whether the amendments contain good ideas. In fact, some of them are ideas that we discussed. The question is will the government fall on the vote. It has nothing to do with the content of the words. Any words whatsoever could have been composed. This is the political gamesmanship that is underway.
I argue that what we need to do is get to work. The other parties are playing a game of brinkmanship. It is like people speeding up their cars heading toward each other to see who will blink first. I say to the other party leaders, in whose hands these questions reside, that they should not to get into a blinking game. They should open their eyes to what Canadians want to see done. They want to see us get to work. They do not want to see the shenanigans and the politics that we see unfolding here.
We look forward to having an opportunity to vote on these issues in a forum that will actually make a difference, a vote in the House of Commons on missile defence. I would like to quote the words we just heard from the Prime Minister. He said “In all that we do, it will be Canadian interests that will prevail, and that will be the case with ballistic missile defence”.
Not one page later he said “There are so many instruments of war in our world. Let Canada continue to be an instrument of peace”.
Let us start by saying no to the weaponization of space and the spending of money on missiles on the North American continent.