Madam Speaker, I rise today to perform what is the most essential job for any Leader of the Opposition: to hold the government to account.
At the end of this speech, I will be holding the government to account in the most direct way possible: by moving yet another motion of non-confidence in this government.
Before I do so, I feel I owe it to this House to explain the reasons why this step has become necessary.
In the normal course of events, the Leader of the Opposition is expected to hold the government to account on particular policies that the opposition feels are misguided, but in normal times the opposition understands and respects that the government has a mandate from the people to implement its policy agenda in general terms, even while opposing specific motions.
But there are also cases when the opposition must hold the government to account in a more fundamental way and tell the government that it has lost the moral authority and democratic legitimacy to govern this country.
Today is one of those more difficult days, where it falls to the Leader of the Opposition to tell the Prime Minister and the government that they cannot carry on: it is time, for God's sake, to go.
We see before us on the government bench a party that has been almost completely discredited. The governing party has been revealed as corrupt. It has been implicated in the most serious financial scandals in Canadian history, scandals which have so tarnished and destroyed its reputation in the province of Quebec that the very viability of the federalist cause is threatened.
Let us be frank. The most despicable abuse has been committed in the name of national unity and on the backs of Quebeckers. In over 12 years, the governments of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin have managed to erase everything Wilfrid Laurier—