Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Toronto Centre.
“That this House has lost confidence in the government”. This is not something that is said lightly. It is something the Liberal Party is saying after serious thought, after consulting with Canadians from coast to coast and after seeing to what extent this government is unable to provide Canadians with the help they need in these difficult times.
It is not a matter of wanting an election. It is simply that the Liberal Party cannot say it still has confidence in the government and does not believe that this government is up to the task that Canadians entrusted it with.
Being in this House used to mean something. It used to be a place of real debate, of real discussion on how to help Canadians participate more fully in our economic prosperity and how to help Canadians move forward with their hopes and dreams. It was a place where we had real conversations about how to articulate our values into policy and address the big challenges on the horizon, looking at where we are going as a people and as a country.
My grandfather, the member for Vancouver North, was here 70 years ago when this House was debating the rise of fascism in Europe and through the years that we were dealing with a post-World War II Canada, industrializing and strengthening our manufacturing base. There were real conversations. My father, 40 years ago, was here in this House to tackle bilingualism, to look at how Canada could be a force for good in the world, a balance in the rise of cold war conflicts. There were issues that defined their times.
Now, on the defining issues of our time, we seem to be nowhere to be found. Where is the government on the environment, how it affects Canadians here at home, how it affects the world that we are shaping, all of us together in this civilization? Where are we?
Where is the government on the fight against poverty, the extreme poverty that exists around the world but also in our own communities, particularly our native communities? The fight against poverty is one that the government has not brought forward; it has not responded to the prodding from this half of the House to address.
The government has been totally absent from the defining issues of our time.
The irony is that at a time when the Liberal Party is saying that this House has lost the confidence of the government, Canadians are suggesting that perhaps they have lost confidence in the capacity of this House collectively to deal with the important issues.
No one has all the answers. The 308 of us who gather from every corner of this country have been entrusted by our constituents to try to work out compromises, policies that will help us through, that we will come together and be worthy of the trust that Canadians have placed in us. Time and time again the government has pushed us to fail Canadians in those responsibilities.
When the government's perfect, culminating achievement has been to create an atmosphere in this House of Commons that is based on attacks, on division, on extreme partisanship, it has succeeded in the one thing we know the right-wing Conservative ideology is all about, which is making Canadians believe less in their government, expecting less from their government, and convincing Canadians that governments should not be in the business of anything other than short-term responses to immediate, pressing electoral problems.
That is not what Canadians need. Unfortunately, it has been demonstrated that the politics of division can be very effective: to pick one's votes, to pander to them, to discard those who were not going to vote for that person anyway. The current government is proof that this is a good way of getting elected, but it is also proof that it cannot govern a country as richly diverse as Canada: east to west, north to south, urban, rural.
We cannot govern a Canada that is strong, not in spite of its differences but because of them, by playing on divisions. That is the great failing of the government.
I have just completed a tour of the CEGEPs and universities in eastern Quebec and, like everywhere else in Canada that I have talked with young people, the same question keeps coming up. Young people are wondering why they would bother being interested in what is happening in Parliament. Why should they get involved or even vote when they hear that a program like the Youth Skills Link Program to help young people get into the labour force gave 75% of its assistance to young people living in Conservative ridings; when they learn that out of a $260 billion economic action plan, only 0.04% was designated for youth programs despite the fact that young people make up 37% of our population; when they know that the student unemployment rate is almost 20%?
When over 200,000 young people have lost their jobs over the past year, the highest job loss of any age group, our youth have serious questions for the government that the government has been unwilling or incapable of answering so far. The tactics and tone of the Conservative government are all designed to make Canadians believe less in their government, less in their society and to expect less of themselves. Nowhere is this more devastating than in the pernicious impact on our youth.
Our young people have the talent, the intelligence and the motivation to truly change Canada and the world. But we are not inspiring them; we are not involving them enough, we are not providing them with the tools they need.
Young people are getting involved in record numbers with their communities, with international and domestic NGOs. They are caring deeply about how they shape the world, how they can make a better community and a better future for all of us. The fact that they could not care less about what happens in the House is, for me, the most glaring indictment of the visionless government.
The dominance of short-term pandering for votes, electoral strategies, has shortchanged all Canadians. The fact that we have been conditioned over the past four years to believe less of our government, to believe less in the capacity of all of us to propose large visions for this country, to say who we are, where we want to go, for me, is the greatest failing here.
There has been no articulation from these Conservatives of where we are going as a people and as a country. That, for me, is the final failure in a long list that ends today for the Liberal Party of Canada.
Let us be very clear that we do not want an election any more than any other Canadian, but the Liberal Party simply cannot pretend that the government is doing a good enough job at serving Canadians and building our future.
This is not about politics. This is beyond politics. This is about demanding a Parliament and a government that is worthy of the hopes and dreams of all Canadians.