Mr. Speaker, it may be because it is late at night, but this is one of the rare times that I have heard references made to people such Marcus Aurelius, Hobbes and de Tocqueville and I would like to congratulate the hon. member for referring to these people. However it seems to me that when the member brought these historical figures forward and seemed to suggest that all the problems he was talking about were problems of today's world in Canada, did he realize that those great people of the past were talking about a balance in their civic life?
Everyone of us in the House are anxious to develop democracy. We all want, as he suggested, some sort of balance. Why does the hon. member not recognize that everybody in the House has a knowledge of history? Everybody understands that the history of Canada is all about bringing the strains of everything that he talked about together and that we wish to make this country work together. Why does his party not try to come together in the dying hours of this Parliament, at this time, to make this House work for the benefit of Canada and get our budget through in a compromise in a sense of what Canada is all about, not what the collapse of the Roman Empire was all about but what Canada is all about in making compromise and being tolerant and respectful of one another's work so we could get Bill C-48 and Bill C-38 through and move on so that next fall we can come back together here and achieve what the Canadian people want us to achieve?