Mr. Speaker, I am going to be splitting my time with my colleague from Saskatoon--Humboldt.
I had a short conversation with my Liberal colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance, who asked me if my speech would have anything to do with Bill C-66, which is the energy package. I said it certainly would. He said that he assumed I might want to talk about the Gomery report because that is the issue of the day and people are primarily focused on it. It is not my intention to do that. I do want to talk about Bill C-66, the energy bill.
I did find it rather inventive that the parliamentary secretary, in his question to his other Liberal colleague who just spoke, did try to suggest, in a strange fashion, that the Bloc would somehow run this scheme along the same lines that the sponsorship scheme was co-opted by the Liberal Party of Canada, which fleeced the Canadian taxpayer and contributed to the largest scandal in Canadian history. I do not think there is any analogy there whatsoever.
It is typical of the Liberals right now to try to invent any excuse to diffuse attention away from what should be, in any setting, in any democracy anywhere, the demise of the government and the demise of the party. Instead, we have a Prime Minister and a government hanging on by their fingernails, refusing to leave and pretending that all is well when all is very bad indeed. Our international reputation and stature are going down the drain over and over again.