Madam Speaker, like all the members, I had the opportunity to spend the past several weekends, including Mother's Day, in my riding. I realized that people were concerned about the political situation in Canada. They told me over and over that the last thing they wanted was go to the polls. They feel that now is not the time for an election.
These people have hopes and dreams. Many of them support budget 2005. They believe it addresses many of their hopes and needs. Health care in Canada, including the application of the Canada Health Act, the issue of doctors, hospitals, nurses and home care, remains their number one concern. The last thing they are asking for is an election.
A year ago the Canadian public elected a minority government. It was a message. I do not think the public got together and decided to elect a minority government so that this or that would happen. Everyone votes individually. But the result is that we have a minority government and our responsibility is to make it work, so there are some negotiations and some discussions.
We presented a budget. The opposition agreed very quickly that it was a good budget. We put some elements in it that opposition members can support, some that we can support, and elements that we can support jointly. We have an amendment to the budget, a second bill, after discussions with the New Democrats that looks at questions that have always been Liberal priorities, always been part of the Liberal agenda, that we said we would accomplish over five years. We advanced those issues.
At the current time people in my riding, among other things, are speaking generally about parliamentary civility, which is something that is of great concern because it casts shadows on members of all parties. When Canadian voters tell me that they do not like their children watching question period because they do not want them to emulate the behaviour, it is very serious. I hope the debate will not degrade to that. I hope civility will be maintained in the House. We have seen it this week, after what happened last week, and I think we are all much improved for that.
People in my riding of southwestern Nova Scotia have told me that they do not want an election. Like all Canadians, like all members of the House, like all members on this side, they are not happy about the sponsorship debacle. They are not happy about what they hear and about the activities that have happened. They want to make sure, as I do, that those who are responsible face the full consequences of the law, but they want to know, as I do, exactly what happened. They want to know from Justice Gomery, from the court; they want things to follow their course. They recognize that if we watch the testimony on TV, we see people contradicting one another. We know things happened that were not right. What the public wants to know is, is this an ongoing matter? Has it been fixed? How do we ensure that this does not happen in the future, and who was responsible? There are many tracks to find that out.
I participated last year on the public accounts committee. We heard from many people. We heard from the Auditor General who told us of the years that these problems existed. That was in the past, some four or five years ago. We also heard from the internal auditors of the government who had been assigned to look at this issue. They assured us that changes had been made to take care of it.
I am comfortable. While opposition members will use the word “corrupt” about this government, they are misleading Canadians. They are knowingly doing that, but they know that no shadow has been cast on any member of the current government.