Mr. Speaker, I meant the Prime Minister.
We have the spectacle of the PCs raging about the Bloc when the Bloc voted with them for two budgets between 2004 and 2006. The Bloc were honourable members when they were propping up the PCs, but now they are seen as evil. We should give our head a shake on this one.
Conservatives are preaching personal responsibility. Well, they should start owning up to their own mistakes in the House. They should quit blaming the Bloc for their problems. As a matter of fact, the Bloc supported the Conservatives in the 39th Parliament on 14 confidence votes. The Conservatives sure have a short memory given their previous relationship with the Bloc.
The Conservatives were more than happy when the leader of the Bloc and the Bloc propped up the Conservative government to pass critical Conservative measures, including their April 2006 throne speech and both the 2006 and 2007 budgets.
For a party that says that it believes in personal responsibility, we do not see much of that over there. The mantra of the Conservatives is to blame someone else. Now that they find themselves at the brink and are going over the falls, do they blame themselves? No. They look around and try to blame other people.
I have a letter, dated September 9, 2004, addressed to the Governor General. that the Prime Minister signed when he was leader of the opposition. The letter has been distributed quite widely and I am sure we will find a way to distribute it more widely. I am sure all of the people in my riding of Elmwood—Transcona would appreciate a copy of this letter so they could see that on September 9, 2004, the current Prime Minister, the current leader of the Bloc and the current leader of the NDP wrote the following letter to the Governor General of the day. It reads, “Excellency,
“As leaders of the opposition parties, we are well aware that, given the Liberal minority government, you could be asked by the Prime Minister to dissolve the 38th Parliament at any time should the House of Commons fail to support some part of the government's program”.