Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have a chance to speak to this motion and to try to live up to the performance of my colleague from Cape Breton—Canso.
I want to congratulate my other colleague, the member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, for bringing this forward. I particularly want to congratulate my colleague from Halifax West, who was the regional minister in Nova Scotia and who negotiated the Atlantic accord along with Premier Hamm and with the former prime minister of Canada and our former finance minister.
If I may, I would like to preface my comments with a thought. As MPs, most of us come to this place with what I think are the best of intentions. We come here to represent our constituents. We also come here to act in a respectful and honourable manner, but every day at about 2:15 that kind of goes out the window, except on Fridays. Outside of question period, we get along. We travel together. We discuss issues. That is the way it should be.
Every now and then things go beyond question period, and November 4, 2004, was one of those days, when the motion brought forward as an opposition day motion was prefaced by this statement: “That this House deplore the attitude of the Prime Minister of Canada at and following the First Ministers' Conference...”. It was a motion designed so that Liberals could not support it, even though at that very moment we were negotiating the Atlantic accord, which came into being about a month later and was enacted a month after that.
On those occasions, we had allegations. We had charges. As Liberal MPs, we were pilloried for no reason except politics. That is shameful, because at that time the prime minister, with the member for Wascana, then the minister of finance, and the member for Halifax West, who was then the minister of fisheries and oceans, and Dr. John Hamm, the premier of Nova Scotia, a good and decent man who represented his province well, were negotiating the Atlantic accord. We had worked on it for a long time.
Whenever I saw the member for Wascana anywhere in the parliamentary precinct, and I am not alone in this, he would tell me they were working on it and it was not easy. I know it was not easy. We knew that other provinces might say it was not fair. But when it came forward and the Atlantic accord was produced, not only was it adopted by the prime minister, the finance minister and the members from the Atlantic caucus, but I am proud to say that my Liberal colleagues from other provinces, where this accord was attacked, stood with us and voted for the Atlantic accord. It was difficult. It was not easy, but it got done.
Today I stand here with my colleagues to talk about this motion that we have put forward. From my friends on this side we have heard about comments made on that day, November 4, that have backfired on Conservative MPs. We have heard the comments of Danny Williams. We have heard from Rodney MacDonald. We have heard from the premier of Saskatchewan.
I am not going to give members a lot of quotes from other politicians. I want to give members some sense of what the media are saying in Nova Scotia, because they are very unbiased. In fact, most of them in Nova Scotia are not particularly friendly to Liberals.
However, here are some headlines we had the day after the budget: One was that the Prime Minister “wants to keep Nova Scotia a have-not” province.
Another one was, “We need a fighter”, and as well, this article by David Rodenhiser states:
Nova Scotians are left asking themselves: Who's standing up for us?
Right now, the answer is no one.
Certainly not our federal cabinet minister...who's defending Ottawa rather than Nova Scotia on this.
Rodenhiser says that not even the premier is defending Nova Scotia and “is content to pursue process rather than take action”. And that was after the premier had taken some action, at least moderate action, to indicate his displeasure.
Here is another headline: “Note to Rodney: [the Prime Minister] played you big time” In the text of this article, “Message to Rodney”, Marilla Stephenson writes:
[The Prime Minister] has played you like a fiddle.
If any theme rang through the Harper budget...it was that the have-nots are to remain...have-nots.