Thank you for your wisdom in that ruling, Mr. Speaker.
Of course, the point, as the hon. member knows quite well, is that I am trying to establish the lack of credibility that the party opposite has on any motion it brings before this House. I think we have established that. Of course the members opposite do not want to hear this and I do not blame them for not wanting to hear it. If I were in their position, I would not want to hear this story again either, but Canadians do want to hear it, so let me go back to the point I was attempting to make.
The Leader of the Opposition is flip-flopping on positions. The point I am making is that if he flip-flops in the examples I am about to give, how can we count on him to be sincere in the motion the Liberals have brought before the House today? Clearly we cannot.
On Kyoto, we do have the quotes. The leader of the official opposition has stated that we cannot make our Kyoto targets. He is on the record as stating that. He was the environment minister in the previous Liberal government and he has stated on the record that we cannot meet our Kyoto targets.
What do we hear today? Time and time again, criticisms are leveled at this government for what the opposition leader says is a failure to meet the Kyoto targets, the very targets the Leader of the Opposition said he could not make. He could not meet those targets by 2012. How can we believe anything the Leader of the Opposition says?
Let us turn to economic matters. That may be a little closer to the heart of this issue that we are debating today. There is still a credibility gap when it comes to members of the opposition. Again, we can point first and foremost to the leader of the official opposition, who has stated on more than one occasion that he did not believe there was anything such as a fiscal imbalance. He did not believe, for example, that there was anything called a fiscal imbalance, yet when we introduced measures in the last budget to fix the fiscal imbalance between the federal government and the provinces, all we heard was criticism from members opposite.
We can talk about things like the equalization formula, on which the Liberal leader has stated that, first, he believes in a fiscal cap. He believes sincerely that no province that receives equalization payments should end up in a fiscal position with a fiscal capacity higher than that of a province that pays into the equalization formula.
That is exactly what we did: we put a cap on to prevent that very thing from happening. Yet what do we hear from members of the opposition? Criticism. They say this is a betrayal of our position. There is no betrayal. We are doing what is fair, what is just, and what is in the best interests of all Canadians, yet members opposite criticize it.
We also have examples in regard to my colleague, the member for Wascana, who, when he was minister of finance in the former Liberal government, stated, he did not believe that there was any fiscal imbalance in this country. He also stated that he was not in a position to remove non-renewable natural resources from the equalization formula, nor would he agree to. In fact, for 13 years, the last three in which he was minister of finance for this country, the Liberals did nothing to deal with the equalization formula.
True, they gave, and again, it is about credibility: the Liberals say one thing when they are in government and another when they are in opposition. How can we believe anything they say now? How can Canadians believe anything they say now? That is why for any motion this government brings, whether it be on income trusts, fiscal caps or the environment, how can one believe anything the Liberals say because of the fact they have changed their position so many times in the past?
Let me conclude by saying that what we have done with our position on tax havens and double-dipping is to ensure that there is a level of tax fairness for all Canadians. Once again, this goes back to the flip-flop and members opposite, such as the member for Markham—Unionville, who has stated he believes there should be no double-dipping. He believes there should be a crackdown on tax havens. Yet day after day in this House in question period, the same member stands up and criticizes the Minister of Finance for doing the very thing which he advocated.
That party has no credibility on any issues and particularly on this motion, and that is why I will be voting against it.