Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to answer that question. I think it is important to give Canadians the best Christmas gift of all, a new government, and I can say that the very first commitment the Conservatives will make when it comes to the finances of the nation is to ensure that we have clean government and that people's money is spent properly. My leader has made a commitment to bring in as his first piece of legislation an accountability act that would put severe limits on lobbying and buying access to public officials.
It is, of course, born out of what we have seen come out of Justice Gomery's report. It has won overwhelming support from those people who are committed to trying to clean this up, from groups like Democracy Watch and others, who are as concerned as anybody about the slide of this country toward the sort of unsavoury government that we see in other parts of the world. We do not need to go there. Canadians deserve better than that.
Therefore, the first point I would make is that we would put that accountability act in place to ensure that we have independent officers of Parliament to oversee the actions of government and make sure that they are not motivated solely by politics and personal gain. That is a very important point.
The second point I would make is that Conservatives understand that one can never have a government or a standard of living or a society rise above the ability of one's economy to generate wealth. This is why we would move very vigorously to remove the barriers that stand in the way of entrepreneurs, farmers and small business people who are trying to create jobs and better their lives so they can look after their families.
My leader and I have spent the last number of months sitting down with groups representing small business, farmers, fishermen and people who are frustrated by the barriers that stand in their way today because we have an unresponsive federal government that will not do anything about these things. We will be releasing in great detail exactly how we will remove some of those barriers, propel these groups forward, and give them an opportunity to raise their own standard of living to create jobs and really bring about the type of success that I think we should have in this country.
I think it is an insult to Canadians that Canada is not today the most prosperous country in the world. We have an extraordinarily wealthy country in terms of natural resources, human resources and access to the most wealthy market in the world, but we are not allowed to exploit it because of these artificial barriers that government has put in place over a period of years. It is time to knock those barriers down. It is time to ensure that Canadians are better off. That will not happen with a tired, out of steam Liberal government.