Mr. Speaker, you know, that hon. member from Edmonton just cannot handle the truth.
At the end of my speech, I will give him the letter that his Prime Minister wrote to a widow of a veteran and then I would like him to stand up in the House and apologize to the House for accusing me of telling something that is not true.
I cannot believe these Conservatives. They stood in opposition on their hind heels and went absolutely crazy on the previous government over this. The reality is it is time for them to go. We cannot trust them any more.
The sad thing is there are some very good people in that Conservative Party whom I would love to call my neighbour. They are decent and honest people, but it is that front bench all centred around the PMO that is being corrupted and absolutely saying anything they can to get elected, to try to get their majority, and betray the promises of Atlantic Canada, Saskatchewan and for that matter as the hon. member for Labrador said, “If they can do it to her, they can do it to you”.
The trust is gone now. It is completely gone. The Conservatives can say and do whatever they please. It simply does not hold any water.
Let me refer to something that is in the Daily News today written by a gentleman named Mr. David Rodenheiser who is a well known columnist of the Daily News. Mr. Rodenheiser is certainly not a New Democrat. I do not think we could accuse him of being a Liberal. Here is what he said about the Prime Minister and the Conservative Party, “The Prime Minister's Conservatives area vicious, vindictive—, and I cannot say the last word because it is unparliamentary, but it starts with an l and ends with an r and there are two vowels in the middle.
The fact is this is what their own commentators are saying now about the Conservatives. It is most unfortunate. We had hoped that there would be openness and transparency, and they would honestly keep their promises. The income trusts promise, gone; VIP promises for widows of veterans, gone; assisted deduction problem for injured soldiers, gone; the excise fuel tax not to raise it above a certain amount, gone; the Atlantic accord, gone.
I have one word to say to the Conservatives from Atlantic Canada especially, they are about to be “gone”. I can assure the House that election cannot happen fast enough. If it was not for the support of the separatists on the budget, they would be gone already today.
The people of Atlantic Canada deserve better. They can only go by what the ministers and the Prime Minister say to them which are on record in Hansard. Just a few weeks ago the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the minister for ACOA, who himself has betrayed many promises.
We will never forget the one he made to David Orchard, and I think David Orchard's comments are absolutely correct, “That is the party that was conceived in deception and born in betrayal”. The Minister of Foreign Affairs from Central Nova said very clearly “We do not kick out people of our party for voting their conscience. There will be no flipping or flopping on budget votes. If people vote their conscience, we will not kick them out”. No sooner than the good member of Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley sat down, he was gone.
Then they eradicated all his personal files of his constituents that he was trying to work with. What kind of party is that? What else are the Conservatives going to do to hurt the people of Atlantic Canada?
We say to them quite clearly. The hon. member for Halifax is correct. It is not too late to fix the problem. Go back to the deal that we had before. There should not be any further deals happening. There should not be any last minute conversations and rushing around.
We had a deal, a deal written in stone. Now the Conservatives want to break that stone and turn it into little pebbles and scatter it across. Their word simply cannot be trusted.
It is unfortunate because when the Government of Canada misleads Canadians, it looks bad on all politicians in the House and across the country.