It has not even been passed. It has not even become law. That was interrupted by an election, and some would say that it was an election that was not necessary.
The Prime Minister now says we cannot have an election for some 10 months. When it comes to the views of Canadians on the acceptability of having this government in power much longer, I am not quite sure why Canadians would want to have this corrupt and unprincipled government in power for 10 more days, let alone 10 more months. It is totally unbelievable.
While I am on this subject, I want to perhaps enlighten the New Democratic Party and its leader from Toronto about something that he may not have understood or considered. It seems to me that what we have here is a contradiction of promises by the Prime Minister. I know the Liberals will want to listen to this and pay close attention.
On the one hand, the Prime Minister said that he looked under his desk and found another $4.6 billion that could be spent on New Democratic priorities, but when pushed on that, he also said that he is not going to allow the country to be driven into deficit over that promise to the socialists. He said that. He said, “We will wait until the end of the fiscal year”.
I need to enlighten the New Democratic Party: the end of the fiscal year is in March of 2006. He said, “We will wait until then, we will see if we have the money, and then I will keep this commitment to the New Democratic Party”.
What about the promise? What about that other promise he made during his now infamous national televised address to the nation when he said--and I am sure he said this--first of all, that Parliament is dysfunctional. We are in agreement with him on that. Second, he said that if he is given the time, 10 more months, he will call an election 30 days after the final report from Gomery. That is what he said.
I am not sure whether the New Democratic Party goes by the same calendar that I do, but I suggest that the promise given by the Prime Minister is not worth the napkin that it is printed on, because the promise is contingent upon the country having enough of a surplus at the end of the fiscal year. However, January comes before March, and in January the Prime Minister has committed to Canadians that he will call an election if one is not held before.
I do not understand how the New Democratic Party can feel it has this commitment from the Prime Minister when there is going to be an election before the commitment ever kicks in. It is not worth the napkin it is written on. That is the reality. I am very surprised that the New Democratic Party has not actually woken up to that fact.
The NDP leader is already admitting that the Prime Minister is good at making promises. I point out that a promise made is a promise broken. It did not take him very long to make a promise to the New Democratic Party and then turn around and break it on his commitment to slash out the corporate tax cuts, which we are in favour of because the reality is that they help build a strong economy and create high-paying jobs in Canada.
The New Democratic Party has a problem with employment. It wanted to make sure that the tax relief, which by the way was well into the future at any rate, was taken out of the budget, but no sooner was the promise made when the Prime Minister said the reality is that the government is going to ensure that tax relief is put back in. If it is taken out of Bill C-43 with one hand, the government is going to put forward some legislation on the other hand and try to put it back in.
Those are the types of promises the Prime Minister continually makes. I would think the new partners of the Liberal Party, this corrupt government, should be concerned about that. They sit in this place and listen to the same broken promises and rhetoric that we have all heard. They use to be concerned about these issues prior to the break week. I do not know what happened during the break week. They were concerned about a corrupt government and all the evidence that was coming out of the Gomery inquiry but now all of a sudden they are not concerned because they got a promise that the Liberal government might spend $4.6 billion at the end of the fiscal year, if there is a sufficient surplus in the country, if they have overtaxed Canadians sufficiently to have that around to spend at the end of the year.
We know there will be an election before that. We know the Conservative Party of Canada will be elected as the government and then it will be our priorities, the Canadian people's priorities, that get addressed, not the priorities of the corrupt Liberal government that is continually trying to find ways to funnel money to itself.
I do not want to go on at any length about this but perhaps during the questions and comments I will be able to address some of these issues at greater length and further enlighten the House.