Mr. Speaker, this is an opportune time to do a quick review on what got us to this very dismal state of affairs tonight, a true case of foreign affairs I might add.
What is taking place tonight is actually foreign to most Canadians. What the Liberals and the NDP are counting on is that people will not understand the travesty that is taking place before our eyes tonight. They know there is no session tomorrow. There may be one on Monday, although we will wait and see, and then it will be summertime. The chances are that the government will be able to gloss this over.
We need to remember that the government brought forward a budget called Bill C-43. At the time, we looked at it and found that a host of issues, for which we had advocated, were actually in that budget, such as the gas tax that goes back to municipalities. For that reason we gave Bill C-43, which was the main budget bill, tacit approval. We felt that was the responsible thing to do.
At the same time, however, the government was dropping like a stone in the polls. The Liberals had gone into the last election with great predictions that they would sweep the election and come up with something like over 200 seats. However they barely survived because of the good job done by the leader of this party and all of the candidates across the country.
As the Liberals watched themselves drop like a stone in the polls, the Gomery inquiry every day backing up what the Auditor General had said, that this was the worst and most corrupt government in the history of Canada, they were faced with a real difficulty and that was surviving a confidence vote here in the House.
What did the Liberals do? In the middle of some night they crept down the House and told the NDP members at the end that the bedroom door was open if they wanted to crawl and then asked them what would be their price. The price was $4.6 billion to buy 19 votes.
The $350 million scandal in Quebec--