He said, “Your time is up”.
I have to admit I thought it was a pretty bizarre and erratic piece of behaviour from the Liberal leader, but, no, his troops got their marching orders. When we came back to Parliament, the NDP said that we needed some action to help the unemployed. The Conservatives said that they would move forward with the 15 to 20 weeks extra. However, the Liberals said that the unemployed could wait. It was about them forming government.
Now we have a bill that would bring forward the home renovation tax credit. It would bring forward support for farmers in drought. However, the Liberal Party is saying, “You little people, you peons, you have to wait till we get government again”.
I find that absolutely unconscionable. However, it speaks to the erratic nature of our Liberal leader. There is this myth that the Liberals always used to put out there that they some how embodied the best of what Canada was, they were somehow the vision of Canada. However, when we read the writings and we hear the speeches of the Liberal leader, we wonder what the Liberals were they thinking.
For example, let us talk about arts. The Liberal leader, when he was a writer in England, was asked how he felt about state support for arts organizations. He said. “While the level of arts funding was miserly in Thatcher's Britain, the principle of weaning the arts of public subsidy to the greatest possible extent was surely right. After all, the moral independence of culture” itself depends on it.
Here is a man who quotes Maggie Thatcher about arts funding. This is the same man who was basically a front piece for George W. on the invasion of Iraq.
I have looked at our present Prime Minister. I have looked at all the crazy crackpot things that came out of the National Citizens Coalition. Even with him, I cannot find anything where he says that we should starve the artists for moral independence. I know some of his backbenchers probably believe that. That is red meat to some of the old Reformers. They go home to their summer barbecues and say that when they get a majority government, they will starve those artists and it will teach them to be morally independent. They could look to the Liberal leader and say that here is a man who has stood up to say it.
This is the kind of erratic nature of the Liberals. They elect a guy to be their leader who will say things that the Prime Minister would never have the guts to say in public. Maybe he would say it if he had a glass of sherry on his own, but the Liberal leader did.
I want to stay on this because this is about what happened with the budget and the erratic nature of the Liberals now coming in and flipping themselves inside out, saying that they have to stand up against the home renovation tax credit, that they have to stand up against EI. Why? Because they want to be government again. It is erratic. They have to call themselves the official opposition because people do not really know where to place them in any political panorama.
I would like to continue with a bit of history.
On the same day that the horrors in Abu Ghraib were exposed to the world on 60 Minutes, which was April 28, 2004, the present leader of the Liberal Party was being interviewed on Charlie Rose. The same day the stories of the horrors of Abu Ghraib were broken internationally, he was speaking about being able to draw clear lines between stress and sleep deprivation, not called torture. He said that it was okay, as long as some basic rules were set on how to mistreat these people, they would not be mistreated too much.
That same day that the story of Abu Ghraib broke, he talked about the need for target assassinations, as long as it was done in a democratic context. I am not sure what the backbenchers of the Reform Party might say at a barbecue function in the summer, but I have never heard the Prime Minister stand and say that as long as the government brings to Parliament a list of people to be shot, targeted assassination is okay. However, the man who is now leading the Liberal Party said that on Charlie Rose on the same day that the whole world was recoiling in horror, regardless of one's political stripes, of what was happening at Abu Ghraib.
In terms of a foreign policy vision, the same day that he was on Charlie Rose, he was trying to explain what went wrong in Iraq. He said that we should go into Iraq. He believed in it. He said that he thought the Iraqis would greet us as liberators. A lot of other people in the world did not think that, but he said that he believed the invasion was worth it. He tried to explain why there was a sudden backlash against America for the invasion of Iraq. He said, “America is deeply hated because we are supposed to have magical powers. The assumption is that the minute we take over a piece of real estate like Iraq, the lights are supposed to go on”.
The world was not angry at George Bush because he took over a piece of real estate. The world was justifiably outraged that the U.S. believed that a sovereign country, anywhere it was, regardless of whether it was run by a tinpot dictator or not, was treated as a piece of real estate. Yet this is the view of the present Liberal leader. I would think those views are very erratic. They have been proven very wrong and they are deeply out of touch with what average Canadians feel.
We are on Bill C-51, the budget implementation bill, and that party, which has never stood up on anything that I can recall, is now suddenly standing up to fight the home renovation tax credit. I wish those members good luck. How do they explain that to average Canadians? Good luck in telling farmers that the deferrals they are asking for after the drought can wait because it is more important for him to be leader than for them to get support.
Once Canadians begin to realize the erratic views, and frankly very outrageous views, they will think twice about accepting the piece of advice that we should vote down support for EI because it is inconvenient, because we should be supporting the Liberal return to power.
I will not gloat, but in the recent byelections the Liberals were fighting with the Green Party to get their deposits back in some ridings. I do not think average Canadians are falling for it either. What we are supposed to do if we are politicians and we have hit a dead end is to go back and revitalize ourselves. We need to start being honest. We need to look in the mirror. That is something the Liberal Party could do right now.
There are a lot of serious problems with the Conservative government. There is a serious lack of vision on the environment, of where we go with Copenhagen, of how we deal with the tar sands, of how we deal with the fact that we are now some $50 billion and climbing in structural deficit and how we get out of it. However, I do not think we can sell to the Canadian people that the best way forward is to oppose measures, which the Liberals have already supported, that will actually help them. That is not being an effective opposition. That is being erratic. We have to move beyond that.
The New Democratic Party, in terms of the House and this parliamentary minority situation, is continuing to look for the opportunities, regardless of political stripe or party, to move forward an agenda that benefits Canadians.
Right now there is deep unease in the country about pensions. People are worried. They are frightened and they are justified in being frightened. We need to move forward an agenda on pensions. We have been trying to do that. There is serious unease about EI reform. I believe the New Democratic Party has 12 bills that try to address the various shortfalls in EI. We recognize the importance of getting a win in one area, taking it and continuing to advance the cause. Our Liberal colleagues are saying that it does not matter. If there is one element of the government's offer for EI, they will reject it all unless they get the whole enchilada. They know very well they will not get it. That is not being an effective opposition.
We are continuing to work on the areas of pensions. We are working on the issue of seniors. Too many of our seniors live in poverty. We want a green strategy, so that at the end of this, Canada is not just like the hangover after all the wild spending by the Conservatives. There needs to be a plan to retool our economy, to rebuild our cities, our municipalities and our rural areas. That is where the green strategy is so important, the need to have a vision so what we are spending money on today, which is putting us into structural deficit, is going to create benefits down the road.
I would not be one to stand up in the House and say that I think the Conservatives have had this vision. I do not believe they do. They have made serious mistakes on how they have spent the money and how they will spend the money. We will continue to hold them accountable for that.
However, on the basic issues of what is in this budget implementation bill, the home renovation tax credit, the first-time home buyers tax credit, the revenue-sharing agreements with the province of Nova Scotia, which includes $175 million payment, and drought relief for livestock owner, these are elements we will support because they will help average Canadians.
As elected representatives of our people, how can we go back to our ridings and say that we are sorry, that we had the chance to get them help but we decided to take the advice of the very erratic Liberal leader and jump off the political edge with him. That is not our job. Our job is to fight for clear, winnable goals and we will continue to do that.