Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member for Dartmouth--Cole Harbour on an excellent speech and I say that without reservation. I would like to repeat the same compliment that he made to the new member for Peterborough. If the member can measure up to the standard of excellence and achievement of the previous member for Dartmouth--Cole Harbour, he too will be somebody who will make his constituents and his family and colleagues very proud. I urge him to continue to work along those lines.
One of the terrible things about this place is that as much as we all try hard not to be partisan, in the end it seems difficult not to be partisan. I believe the member when he said how devoted he is to access to education, to the environmental initiatives that were promised by his government, to the international development objectives, and so on. The reality is that for almost 13 years we can honestly say that we saw very little delivered on what was desperately needed in this country.
With the Liberal Party now in opposition, does the member feel that there can be some real coming to grips with the damage done to the education system because of inadequate funding? We have made no progress and have backslid in meeting our commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To be fair, the member was not here when the Liberal government presided over the largest cuts in Canadian history to our international development commitments. Is it the view of the member that with the Liberal Party now in--