Madam Speaker, I am sorry to disappoint the members on the other side. They are not going to hear a speech that they have heard before, but it is going to be one that reminds them that there have been some strange twists and turns from the Prime Minister who has completed the cycle with Bill C-48. He has absolutely completed the cycle. His reputation is now in tatters.
He is the man who was the white knight as the finance minister who had this big reputation for balancing the books, although when we look at it closely we know what it was. It was balancing the books on the backs of the provinces and the municipalities, cutbacks in health care funding, cutbacks to the municipalities. That is how he balanced the books. Nonetheless he had this reputation as the big white knight. Where is his reputation these days? It is in tatters. In fact his reputation and his character are being called into question.
I brought over some reading material for this evening and I happened to look at Paul Wells' page.
I want to note, Madam Speaker, that we are hearing a lot of heckling from the other side but those members do not have the courage to get up. They are to embarrassed to get up and debate the bill. They can only resort to is heckling. I do not blame them for being embarrassed about this bill.
This shady deal with the NDP was done in a no-tell motel, and I am not sure who actually rented the room. Did Paul stay in the car and Jack rent the room, or was it the other way around? Basil Hargrove was in an adjoining room hollering through the door once in a while, giving advice, and Ralph was on a 1-900 tie-in from Regina. If I were the finance minister I would resign. I would be too embarrassed to continue on after that.
What did Paul Wells have to say about the Prime Minister? In Macleans the headline reads, “Behold the irrelevant Prime Minister”. He stated:
And while the Prime Minister's expressive eyes sometimes betray exasperation at the failure of the world to see things the way he sees them, they show no hint of self-doubt as he strolls into each new minefield armed with the tool kit of a demagogue.
That is what it is. We saw it in the election campaign, demonizing, misrepresenting, and now the Prime Minister's reputation is completely in tatters.
Canadians are disappointed. I remind the House that only 18 months ago he was the finance minister, the man who had completed a successful campaign to push out a sitting prime minister. After 12 years he pushed out Mr. Chrétien and the big story was he was going to sweep the country with 250 seats. He was going to take seats in Alberta, including my riding, and seats all over the country. Fast forward to the election on June 28, and it was a minority government. He blew it. In his efforts to unseat Mr. Chrétien and in the election campaign, he exposed himself as a weak Prime Minister, a man who will do any deal to survive. That is not what Canadians expect. They want leadership.
With a minority government after a nasty campaign, what did he do? The first deal he did was in the throne speech. He had to do a deal with the opposition parties to have lower taxes for Canadians. It did not take long to get rid of that promise however, once he got through that crisis.
Then the budget was delivered on February 23. The finance minister stood in the House and said that it could not be tinkered with and could not be cherry-picked. All of a sudden, a month and a half later, look what happened. The finance minister really should resign because he has been put out to pasture. The Prime Minister has undermined his own finance minister. He basically did not even include him in the discussions that were going on, except for that 1-900 tie-in. The Prime Minister has undercut his own finance minister. When things really got tough, he did the deal with the NDP.
It is absolutely shameful. It is the kind of deal we saw in the sixties and it is even worse. The deal in the 1960s put us in massive debt. We are still paying $35 billion a year interest charges as a result of that.
The deal with the NDP was not the end of it. Then the Prime Minister had to do the Kyoto amendment. Therefore, the budget implementation bill was a different bill than the budget itself. Then all of a sudden there was the NDP deal, where he had to line up 19 members at $240 million a member. That was the cost of that deal.
That was not enough. Then the Prime Minister had to do a deal with the member for Newmarket—Aurora, who was fast-tracked to the front of the line. I wonder about the backbenchers over there. Some people have waited a lot of years to be in cabinet. He has shown he will do any deal.
Contact was made with the member for Newton—North Delta. We have the tapes. We know exactly what was going on there. He was trying to purchase another member.
Fiscal responsibility? I do not think so. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Association of Chief Executives, Don Drummond, the CFIB, the IMF and the OECD have all condemned the way the Prime Minister has operated. What did the Economist call him? It is disgraceful. Our international reputation is being besmirched because the Prime Minister will do anything to hang on to power.
This has shown me that we have a Prime Minister who is weak. He will do any deal to stay in power. He is desperate. He is clinging to power by his fingernails.
We have a $4.6 billion deal with the NDP and what is next when the budget is over, when the Liberals finally get this passed? Will the NDP raise the price again? Another $6 billion for the NDP? He is a weak Prime Minister. His character is being greatly destroyed in this whole process.
History will not judge the Prime Minister well. He has ruined his reputation in his desperation to hang on to power. It is shameful. Canadians are disappointed.
I was on the prebudget consultations across the country. My colleague from Portage was on that committee as well. We heard from hundreds of Canadians and organizations about what they wanted. Then we had the budget. The finance minister said nothing could be changed. Some of those priorities were in there. What happened? The Liberals did the deal with the NDP. What does that say to the people in those prebudget hearings? Should we even have them next year if this government is in power? It was a slap in the face to all those people who came to make representations in prebudget consultations. The Liberals are willing to do a deal with the NDP in a back room in a cheap motel. It is shameful.
I wonder how many people will come to the prebudget hearings next year when they know the government, because of its desperate needs, will do anything to hang on to power? What use is it to make a representation to the finance committee when the Liberals undercut it, the way they did with the NDP?
I do not think the NDP members deserve much better than what I am saying about the Prime Minister. This is shameful. That is not what Canadians elected them to do, to use blackmail, do this deal and keep the government in power. It cost $240 million per NDP vote. That is what the cost has been.
I heard the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance say earlier that Liberals members did not like what happened, but this was the cost of staying in power. If that is the cost of staying in power, surely they should have a bit of pride and say they are not willing to do any deal to hang on to power.
I would like the finance minister to explain why he is still finance minister, quite frankly. He should resign because he has been embarrassed by his own Prime Minister.