Mr. Speaker, we certainly are in a bit of a mess. It is kind of ironic that the Prime Minister does not want this matter to come to a vote. It is apparently because he is afraid of what the House might say, so he is doing anything and everything to avoid facing the House and trying to obtain the confidence of it in the measures he has proposed in the fiscal update.
We have just been through an election recently. I congratulate you, Mr. Speaker, on the result, as well as all members. It is in fact an honour to be here.
One thing I heard repeatedly during the election was Canadians expected us to co-operate with each other, to act like adults, to show that we would work toward the betterment of the nation and all of those things. I know other members heard exactly the same thing.
Everyone will recollect that we had a five round election in this very House for the Speaker. The central issue in that election was none other than decorum in the House. We all commented on it. We were embarrassed about it and embarrassed by the fact that when people, particularly school children, were in the gallery, it was not an impressive display of parliamentary decorum. That was the number one message from my electorate.
I gave a speech a week ago Friday and was asked by a member of the audience whether decorum in the House might improve and we would show more respect for each other, et cetera. I hesitated and in doing so I probably disclosed my answer before I spoke. I really had no faith that this would occur. I have been in the House 11 years and the House is what it is. At times what we see on television is an embarrassment.
We heard the Speech from the Throne and there was some respect and an exchange of views. In fact, the Speech from the Throne was amended by the Liberal Party and it then enjoyed the support of the party. The conviviality and the respect seemed to last maybe three, four or five days and that was pretty well it. Then the fiscal update was announced.
The fiscal update is supposed to be an economic statement. It is supposed to reflect what the Department of Finance thinks are the economic numbers and projections going forward. It is supposed to reflect inflation, GDP, growth in nominal GDP, anticipated revenues, et cetera. It is simply that; it is an economic statement.
When I was in the Department of Finance and worked on these numbers, we thought that if the discussion about the fiscal statement lasted more than a day, then it was a failure.
Inserted into the fiscal update were several things that had absolutely nothing to do with it. The signal was laid down by the Prime Minister that this was gotcha time. This was a time to attack democracy. There is nothing like using a crisis to advance one's political cause. He decided to launch an attack on women, unions and political financing. I have no idea what any of those things had to do with the fiscal update.
We had the chorus of Conservatives launching into this irrelevancy and we had, unfortunately, a political statement made for ideological purposes in a fiscal update, which, in effect, ended the civility of Parliament. All three parties had an immediate reaction to this launch of attack on democracy.
I have watched the Prime Minister in action for a number of years now. I wanted to believe he got the message, that he wanted to set a better tone in the House and that he would set a tone which would create a level of stability that would not embarrass us all when we went outside the chamber.
Unfortunately the Prime Minister cannot help himself. It is not in his DNA. It is as if every waking moment of his political life is spent dreaming up new ways in which he can basically eliminate any opposition to his views.
I do not think he is going to rest until he has the rest of us goose-stepping our way down the halls of Parliament chanting heil Harper—