Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to this Liberal Party motion. I will focus on the second part of the motion, which reads:
That this House...calls upon the Government of Canada to work cooperatively with the governments of all provinces and territories to assure that the prosperity and well-being of Canadians is maintained and enhanced.
That is the big problem: this government pays very little attention to prosperity and, in an economic context where clouds are forming on the horizon, this government refuses to do anything about it. Laissez-faire is this government's leitmotif.
We have just gone through two budgets: one in Ottawa and one in Quebec City. In Quebec City, the finance minister had difficulty maintaining a balanced budget. In Ottawa, the Minister of Finance had to expand his coffers to accommodate all his budgetary surpluses. These two budgets illustrate once again the striking contrast between the situations of the two governments: the money is still in Ottawa. Nonetheless, the difficult economic situation we have been facing for the past few years forces all governments to act and react and, in short, to be visionaries.
We are dealing with a major crisis in the forestry and manufacturing industries. The spike in the dollar, which did not leave the companies with enough time to adjust, the price of oil, which increases the cost of production, and the financial crisis in the United States are other factors that should call the government to action. Unfortunately, we are dealing with an outdated Conservative government.
As Alain Dubuc wrote in a column on the budget, “this lack of vision can be explained by the conservative philosophy of the Harper government, which does not believe in the role of the state and avoids economic intervention like the plague. It is an outdated conservatism—