Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member his opinion on some glaring omissions from the throne speech when it comes to dealing with the west. The Prime Minister spent an awful lot of time travelling the west during the last two or three months and promising all and sundry that things were going to be different.
Here is the shortlist I have. These are glaring omissions for many western Canadians, which they would have liked to have had addressed in the throne speech.
There is no commitment to Senate reform. There is no commitment to scrap the $1 billion gun registry. There is no commitment to tax relief. There is no mention of the softwood lumber issue and how to resolve it. There is no mention of the mad cow disease problem and how to solve it. There is no mention of electoral reform. There is no mention of offshore exploratory drilling off the west coast. There is no implementation plan for Kyoto. There is no plan on how gas taxes are going to be transferred to the provinces. There are no ideas on foreign affairs, cultural policy and health care reform. The government will have to study that, because it just does not know what to do. It will have to ask the provinces for their opinions.
The government has admitted that the state of student loan debt is deplorable, that aboriginal affairs is shameful, and that Canada's cultural policy is adrift, that things are bad and getting worse.
This is from the government that caused the problems to begin with. In western Canada, for that list that I just read off, to ignore those western Canadian dreams--and they are the dreams of many other Canadians, not just those in the west--in the west we have been saying that these are the sorts of issues we want the government to address in the House. To have travelled through the west and to pretend that those issues do not exist is a slap in the face of western Canadians, who are saying the government must deal with them or else deal with an angry electorate.
I would like the member to address this, because I think the Liberals have missed the boat in a serious way on western Canadian issues, which is causing us to again get frustrated with this federal government.