Madam Speaker, I am pleased, on behalf of my party, to rise in the House today to say that I agree that this government no longer has the confidence of Canadians. This week in the House, the majority of members from all sides voted for a January or February election.
The Prime Minister, who says he wants to reduce the democratic deficit, has done the exact opposite. He has refused to heed the extremely clear directives of the House and the democratic direction expressed. He has decided, despite this, to dig in his heels and force an election campaign during the Christmas holidays. How atrocious. The Prime Minister is ignoring the will of the House, thereby forcing a Christmas election on Canadians.
I would like to quote a few things Justice Gomery said, because this is extremely important. Everyone knows that this government has lost the trust of Canadians and they also know why. For 12 years, this government has been one long scandal. It is obvious to Canadians, with the sponsorship scandal, that this government is corrupt.
Justice Gomery and his commission of inquiry found:
clear evidence of political involvement in the administration—;
a veil of secrecy surrounding the administration—;
reluctance, for fear of reprisal, by virtually all public servants—;
gross overcharging—;
deliberate actions to avoid compliance with federal legislation and policies—;
They broke the law. They have not apologized; rather, they continue to break it. I will come back to this later.
I continue to quote:
a complex web of financial transactions...involving kickbacks and illegal contributions to a political party—;
certain agencies carrying on their payrolls individuals who were, in effect, working on Liberal Party matters;
the refusal of ministers...to acknowledge their responsibility for the problems of mismanagement that occurred.
Finally, I come to the most important point:
the existence of a “culture of entitlement” among political officials—;
These are Justice Gomery's findings, and the Liberal Party and this government will be judged on those findings in the coming weeks.
That is not all. Over the years we have consistently seen this culture of entitlement impregnate every level of the Liberal Party. All we have to do, going beyond the sponsorship scandal, is talk about some of the other scandals of the government: the Somalia inquiry that was shut down; the APEC inquiry; shawinigate; the tainted blood scandal; the HRDC scandal; the employment insurance rip-off; George Radwanski and the consistent process of unlimited expense claims for Liberal appointees, something that has been in existence and that the Liberals have done nothing about.
We have had the Prime Minister's CSL contracts and the fact that the government was 1,000% off in estimating the value of those contracts. We have over $9 billion going into unaccountable foundations that are beyond the purview of the Auditor General and the government refuses to allow those funds to be scrutinized by the Auditor General. We have Canada Post and André Ouellet. We have David Dingwall and his entitlements. We have the ambassador in France throwing $200,000 parties. We had the submarine fiasco. We had the Toronto Port Authority, which I will come back to in a moment.
What we are talking about is systematic corruption. Judge Gomery identified it and clearly said that the culture of entitlement exists within the Liberal Party and that is why Canadians will be judging it in just a few weeks.
The Toronto Port Authority is the latest in the long list of Liberal scandals. Here we have $35 million that was thrown away for a bridge that was never built. We have had freedom of information requests. We have questioned the minister and we have continued to try to get answers as to what happened to that $35 million. Where was it paid? Why was it paid? The government stonewalls because it is afraid that Canadians will find out the truth. We will continue to press the government to find out what happened to that money.
It is not just because of what the Liberal government has done that Canadians have lost confidence. It is what the government has not done. Every time Liberal members rise in the House to talk about what a beautiful job they have done, we in this corner hang our heads because we know that the government is so disconnected from the reality that exists on main streets across the country that it does not even realize the size and scope of the economic disaster that Canadian families are facing from coast to coast to coast.
Over 60% of Canadian families are earning, in real terms, less than they were earning 15 years ago. We have seen that most jobs created by the Liberals' policy have been part time or temporary in nature. Most of those jobs no longer have pensions. Most Canadian families are having a harder and harder time of it, struggling more and more to get by, and the government has done nothing for them.
We have over 1.1 million poor kids in the country and the government has done nothing for them. We have seen homelessness triple in many communities across the country, poor families, working families that can no longer afford housing. We know the government did nothing until the New Democratic Party caucus forced it to cut the corporate tax cuts it wanted to bring in and to bring in $1.6 billion to start addressing the homelessness crisis.
The truth is that the Liberal government does not act unless the NDP forces it to. We have done a lot with 18 or 19 members. I can tell members that in the next House, in the 39th Parliament, we will be doing oh so much more because we will have oh so many more members of Parliament in the NDP caucus forcing members in the other three corners of the House to work on these important issues.
The government has failed Canadian families. We have seen a failure of dealing with poverty among kids that is growing at record levels. We have seen a failed trade policy, which is another reason Canadians have lost confidence in this government.
In August, George Bush arbitrarily ripped up the dispute settlement mechanism of NAFTA and our government has done absolutely nothing in response. In British Columbia, 20,000 jobs have been lost and 40,000 jobs have been lost across the country. What has the government done, aside from placing a phone call, which obviously took a lot of effort because it took two months to make it? It has continued to negotiate concessions on NAFTA-plus. The NAFTA-plus concessions, as we know, are in over 300 areas, including food safety and air safety. Instead of standing up to the Bush administration, the government just cannot wait to concede more to it. That is another reason Canadians have lost confidence in the government.
Canadians have lost confidence in the government because its environmental policy is a failure. We are in a worse environmental crisis now than before the Liberals came into government. Smog days have expanded, as the member for Toronto—Danforth mentioned. Greenhouse gas emissions have not gone down. They have gone up more than 20%. We have seen increasing for profit privatization in health care, which the government has done nothing about, and a sell-out of Canada without precedence. Even Brian Mulroney was not this bad. Eleven thousand corporations and companies have been sold out by the government by a rubber stamp process.
Canadians will have a choice in a few weeks that is beyond the corrupt Liberals and the foolish Conservatives. Canadians will have a new choice. They will be choosing between the NDP, the Liberals and the Conservatives. However the NDP brings forward the most popular and the most trusted leader in the country. That is the choice facing Canadians.