Mr. Speaker, at the outset of today's historic debate I would like to begin by thanking my colleague from Central Nova for graciously sharing his time with me. He has done remarkable work, not only for his constituents of Central Nova but also on behalf of the new Conservative Party as its deputy leader. I want to make note of that.
In the time I have today I would like to dispel a couple of myths and walk the House and the viewing public through a chronology of events of this the 38th Parliament. I cannot say the word that is most appropriate because it is deemed unparliamentary to say the word lie, but let me say it this way. It is being widely reported in the media nowadays that the government is resorting to a lot of whoppers.
It seems like the government House leader adheres to that old adage that if someone says something long enough, loud enough and often enough, there are people who will believe it. We saw that the last time in the campaign of fear that the Liberals ran against the new Conservative Party in the June 2004 election. It was a campaign of fear against a campaign of hope and, unfortunately, and I mean this sincerely, the campaign of fear ultimately won out on voting day. I am really hopeful that this time Canadians will make up their minds not out of fear or from the many blatant, bald-faced whoppers that the Liberals will say about Conservatives to try to frighten voters away from supporting us at the polls whenever the election date is set.
The first thing I want to dispel is the accusation that somehow the Conservative Party, as Her Majesty's official loyal opposition in this place, has been totally consumed with trying to force an election. That is blatantly false. Mr. Speaker, you know it and I think Canadians who have been paying attention to what has been going on in Parliament over the last 18 months, or however long it has been, would know that as well.
We have tried to make Parliament work right from the very beginning. Let us reflect on the reality. Even before this 38th Parliament began to sit in October of last year, the leader of the official opposition, the MP for Calgary Southwest, got together with the other two opposition leaders and said that in order to make Parliament work better we should have a meeting to see what we can do.
They came up with a number of changes to the Standing Orders. People who have followed this particular Parliament would know that. They made the change to have a vote on ratification of international treaties. They thought it was pretty important that rather than just having the cabinet decide that, it should come to the chamber for ratification.
They wanted to ensure a greater level of accountability. Accountability is a word we will be hearing so much of over the coming weeks and months. All leaders wanted to ensure for themselves, as well as the Prime Minister, that they would be held accountable with questions and comments in this chamber because, up until they made that change, that had not happened.
They wanted to strike two new standing committees of Parliament, one to address women's issues and the other access to information, privacy and ethics. Ethics is another word that we will be hearing a lot of over the next number of weeks and months as well.
As we very well know, one other change they agreed upon and subsequently made to Parliament was to ensure that the Deputy Speaker's role and the other two acting Speakers were brought forward by the elected Speaker of this chamber rather than the Prime Minister. I think that was a very positive change that was brought forward.
When the throne speech was made on October 4 of last year, it was our leader, the Conservative leader, the member for Calgary Southwest, because it looked like Parliament might fall that quickly with a vote on the throne speech, got together with the opposition leaders, ultimately with the Prime Minister, and brought forward amendments to the throne speech, something that was unheard of.
They wanted to ensure that the employment insurance fund could be used only for the benefit of workers instead of for balancing the federal budget. What a concept. They wanted to ensure the government had to tell the truth in budget forecasting. There is a novel idea that the Liberals have trouble with. They wanted to ensure that the subject of the ballistic missile defence program came to a vote in the House of Commons. Those are just three of the five amendments they brought forward.
What happened to those amendments? If we reflect back on them, virtually nothing happened to them and yet the Liberal government proclaims that somehow it is trying to make Parliament work, not us.
That leads me to another issue, which is opposition days. For the people who are watching, opposition days are very important for accountability, for holding a government to account. They are the days that are set aside in the parliamentary calendar for opposition parties to bring issues of importance to their constituents, to the 63% of Canadians who did not vote Liberal in the last election, to bring those issues to the floor of the House of Commons. What did the government and its House leader do? They cancelled them in April of this year. When the government knew it might face a confidence vote it cancelled the opposition days and postponed them until June so it could know that the opposition was unlikely to force an election in June because we would have a mid-summer vote.
The government did the same thing this fall. The House started sitting on September 26. We had our first opposition day just last week. All those days went by. Why? The government was afraid. It now has the audacity to suggest that the coming election that will straddle the Christmas season is somehow our fault.
The reality is that if we would have had our way we would have had the election last spring, as the House well knows. We certainly would have had it this fall when the weather was nice. No problem.
We have believed since April of last year, when the revelations from the Gomery inquiry became so damning, that the government does not deserve to be in office. However this whole nonsense that we are somehow consumed with only desiring an election is absolutely not credible.
The record will show that of the somewhere in the neighbourhood of 80 bills introduced with the flurry of activity we saw last week, we have either supported or taken a position to support 60% of them, which is 48 of the 80. We, the official opposition, have been acting responsibly on the part of Canadians.
Let us look at the government record. Including today, although I doubt the government will support the motion today, but of the 24 opposition supply day motions the government has supported exactly three, which is 12%. Even of the ones that passed without the support of the Liberals, virtually nothing has happened. This is how the government says that it is in support of democracy.
I heard the government House leader say during his remarks earlier today that somehow his government was the bastion of democracy. It is absolutely ridiculous. The reality is that this is the most undemocratic Parliament in our nation's history, the way these members have performed.
One of the opposition motions that was passed over the last year was to ensure all victims of hepatitis C received compensation. The second motion passed was to ensure that farmers were adequately compensated. This is important, not only to the people of Prince George--Peace River, who I am always privileged to represent here, but to farmers and farm families who are struggling under an income crisis from coast to coast, whether they are corn producers, beef producers or whatever. I want to remind everyone that we wanted to have a take note debate on the issue. We negotiated that with the House leaders and the government said that as long as the minister was available we could have it on Tuesday night. That was two nights ago on November 22 but somehow the minister was not available. Therefore the Liberals scratched the idea of having a take note debate, as if a debate on something that important hinges upon the need to have the minister in the chamber. What a joke.
However the Liberals try to pretend somehow that they have defended democracy when everyone who has watched what has unfolded over the last year knows exactly the opposite.