Mr. Speaker, it looks like my presentation will be broken up in sections, seeing as I will soon be interrupted for statements by members and then of course by oral question period. It will be my pleasure to complete my speech afterward.
Since the beginning of the debate this morning, I have had the opportunity to hear all sorts of arguments filled more with demagoguery thansubstance. I have heard Conservative colleagues from Newfoundland and Liberal colleagues from Newfoundland who clearly do not share the same view and, while claiming the best interests of Newfoundland, are clearly interested much more in their own political interests.
We on this side share the outrage of the Government of Newfoundland. We understand this outrage, because it is in response to the traditional arrogance of the Liberal government, which has once again betrayed and broken a promise it had made. That comes as no surprise to us. We are used to this kind of attitude on the part of the Liberal government.
I will give a few examples toward the end of my speech if I have any time left. In Quebec, we have had many opportunities to see this and previous Liberal governments make extremely generous promises to Quebeckers and back out once in office in cowardly fashion.
We do understand the outrage of Newfoundland. But at the same time we are finding it pretty amazing that, after so many years of Liberal government, anyone can still be surprised to realize that it is this government's trademark, so to speak, to make promises and then ignore them.
In fact, this attitude of the government party, which has become somewhat of an institution in Canada, is responsible for the very high level of cynicism for politicians in the population, the cynicism that the Prime Minister, when he was running for the leadership of the Liberal Party, claimed to want to eliminate by improving standards. But indications are that, as soon as he took office, he simply started repeating, imitating, copying the attitude of his predecessors. As my colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot indicated, before the election, he promised the moon to everyone but, once in office, of course, he changed his attitude.
We of course agree with the concerns of the Newfoundland government, but the Conservative motion now before the House is a very inaccurate reflection of these concerns. While we understand the outrage of the Newfoundland government, and while we share its concerns up to a point, there is no way we can support the motion, as it is worded. After oral question period, I intend to provide a more detailed explanation of the reasons why we will not support this motion.
In the meantime, I will simply say that we are opposed to this motion because we believe that the potential negative effects of it and, of course, those of any agreement that might be reached between the federal government and the Newfoundland and Nova Scotia governments, could be worse than the benefits of it, and this is true even for Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.
This debate gives me an opportunity to go back, if only briefly, to the first ministers' conference on health, which took place in September. All the participants came out of that conference boasting, congratulating each other and saying that they had accomplished a great deal. However, we on this side said that we would not consider the conference a real success until after the October 26 conference. Obviously, the results speak for themselves. I will get back to this after oral question period.