Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to take part in today's opposition day motion. I want to focus on two major points. FIrst, I want to highlight the incoherent and inconsistent approach that the opposition has taken to the confidence conventions of Parliament.
Second, I want to take the opportunity to put on record the numerous initiatives that this government has taken to change the way that things work in Ottawa, to change our institutions, to change the way that things work in Canada to support productivity and investing in Canadians, to in fact look at increasing our trade and competitiveness in the world, and to play a role in the world to protect and to be compassionate with other nations that are not as fortunate. These are the things that this government has done and would like to do.
For weeks the opposition has supported the government in implementing its policy agenda, even while talking about wanting to force an election. If that is not an incoherent thing, I do not know what it is.
In speech after speech the opposition has talked about the Gomery report and what terrible things it said. I would like to quote what Justice Gomery said. He said:
There is no reason for the public's confidence in the integrity of our democratic institutions to be shaken....Canadians should not forget that the vast majority of our public officials and politicians do their work honestly, diligently and effectively, and emerge from this inquiry free of any blame.
Instead, what we hear is innuendo after innuendo and I can only come to one conclusion. We know that the Prime Minister has promised to call an election 30 days after Justice Gomery's final report. Why is it that if everyone across the way is so convinced that we have done terrible things that they do not want to listen to what the facts say in the report? Because the opposition wants to run an election on innuendo. The opposition does not wish to run an election on facts. Those members do not want to hear what Justice Gomery has to say, but we want to hear what Justice Gomery has to say.
The fact is it was this government that brought the Gomery commission into being, giving it the broadest possible mandate to get to the truth. It was this government that cancelled the whole sponsorship program as soon as the Auditor General's report came out saying that there were problems with that program. It was this government that took steps immediately after Justice Gomery brought out his interim report to take care of some of the things that he talked about with regard to the bad apples that we have all heard about within the Liberal Party itself and within other sectors. This innuendo is really what it is all about.
The whole idea of confidence and the confidence convention in this place is at the heart of our system of responsible government. In fact, it is a basic principle that requires the government to be responsible to the House for its actions. This government must have the confidence of a majority of members to remain in power.
There have been very few occasions in Canadian history, in fact there have been no examples over the last 25 years, when a government has fallen because of a confidence vote. The first government to be defeated was the Meighen government in 1926. Prime Minister Meighen was defeated on a motion that basically questioned the legal authority of the government to govern.
We know from that affair that Prime Minister Meighen took action in the House of Commons. As a result of the lack of confidence in him personally, the opposition took the immediate opportunity for lack of confidence in him.
In 1974 the Trudeau government was defeated on a subamendment to a budget that neither opposition party could support.
The best known example of a government being defeated on no confidence was the Clark government in 1979, when the opposition parties strongly objected to Mr. Crosbie's budget that increased gasoline taxes.
What do opposition parties do when they are faced with a lack of confidence? They immediately do what they need to do to defeat the government at the earliest opportunity. We know that the opposition could have done that by passing a subamendment to the budget which condemned past governments for their policies.
What do these experiences teach us about that convention and that practice in this House? We have learned that opposition parties in the past were not afraid to demonstrate their lack of confidence in governments.
What we have seen in this House is games being played. We have seen silliness in the past by members not going to committees and not forming a quorum in the House, a little bit of game playing. This is not about a lack of confidence. The same opposition parties supported this government on its ways and means motion yesterday. They have supported this government on its budget bills.
The opposition parties have supported this government, although I must say it is inconsistent of Her Majesty's official opposition in saying that it wants tax cuts and then did not support tax cuts. It is another example of the incoherence and the game playing that is going on. In fact, when we brought about $100 billion in tax cuts in 2001, the same opposition party that bleats about tax cuts all the time did not support it either.
I just wonder whether this is all a game. Is this a game? With a lack of confidence in a government, it should not be supporting the government's votes in the House. On 50 occasions in Parliament those opposition parties have expressed their confidence in this same government. Now this week, suddenly they are eager to implement the government's fiscal priorities. We saw that from the way they voted.
There was the absurd motion a week ago Monday which suggested that the opposition parties want an election called in January, but in the meantime, they want the government to implement its policies. Are they supporting the government's policies? Do they think that they are good? If so, they have confidence in the government.
Again we are back to political opportunism, wanting to run on innuendo and not wanting to wait for the Gomery report to listen to the truth. If they are so convinced that this government is corrupt, they should listen to the truth and then run on that. That is not what we see happening here. What we see is political opportunism at its absolute worst.
There are facts that I want to bring out. It was, as I said before, this government that brought about the Gomery commission. We are not afraid of Gomery. We want to hear Gomery. We want to hear what he says. We want to listen to him so that we can make those changes, and we have already made changes after his interim report.
For the sake of a few months, three months actually, we have really important bills, but these opposition parties do not want to bring about those bills, for whatever their reasons. These are bills that, for shame, many of Her Majesty's loyal opposition who come from the west should feel terrible about not bringing forward.
We hear them arguing about how they have no trust in the United States trade, that softwood lumber is not working and there is frustration. What does this government do? We want to diversify and broaden our trade, so we set up the Asia-Pacific trading systems. We want to work on that. We set up the Pacific gateway bill. We set up some policies that go with the Pacific gateway. The ones that would benefit are the western provinces, yet this bill is not going to come fruition because the opposition parties do not want to wait three months to allow this bill to pass. As a British Columbian, I can only say shame, shame, shame. That is all I can say.
The 2010 Olympics is going to be a really big thing for British Columbia. We have worked so hard. That bill was to come here within the next three months. They do not want that to come forward. The money that was to be allocated for that is going to die.
We talked about street racing and there was this big talk in the House about crime. We are bringing out a street racing bill. In Richmond, B.C. we have seen the death of a policeman and others from street racing. That bill is not going to be passed because the opposition parties are in hurry to get into an election and not allow that come to the floor.
The NDP are no better. We heard questions today in question period about most indebted countries. We have a bill of $130 million to forgive the debt for the most indebted countries. That bill is not going to pass, yet the NDP are saying they care about it.
We talked about immigration. We have about $168 million now that is going to go to immigration to deal with citizenship, to deal with adoption, to deal with some of the things that those parties have said they wanted to support. That bill is not going to come before the House because of that political opportunism.
There is climate change and the Public Health Agency. We are worried about avian flu. We saw what happened with SARS. None of those things are going to come to pass because of that kind of cheap political opportunism in this House.
All I can say is shame.