Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to participate in the debate from the Speech from the Throne, although I should say at the outset that I find the debate, and I guess the whole Speech from the Throne, somewhat unusual and somewhat strange. A Speech from the Throne has a very long tradition in history, in our Commonwealth, in our western democracy system, under the Westminster system. Usually, it is the agenda of the government, read by Her Majesty the Queen, or in the case of Canada a representative of Her Majesty the Queen. It basically sets out what the government intends to accomplish over the term of the Parliament, or the session, and lays out a best-case scenario, if everything goes well, of what that government intends to accomplish. Of course it is read by a representative of Her Majesty the Queen.
This document is somewhat strange because this, as we know, is the third Speech from the Throne we have had in about 15 months. We did have a Speech from the Throne in November 2008. We had another one in February 2009. And now we have one in March of this year, and it really is not an agenda. It is not a vision. Basically, what I see it being is a list of certain items that are going on in the country, the crisis in Haiti and the Olympic Games, and it is a list of programs. I think the government went to every department and agency in Ottawa and asked for a list of what they have been doing over the last five years, and this has all been appended into the Speech from the Throne. It really does not give anything in the way of an agenda or a vision or what the government really intends to accomplish over the next session of this, the 40th Parliament of Canada.
I am going to make the submission that there are a lot of issues facing Canadians. These are issues that I think should have been in the Speech from the Throne. They are issues that Canadians are talking about. Of course the first issue was the prorogation of this House, this assembly, that occurred back in December of last year. That is what they are talking about. They certainly would have liked to have seen something in the Speech from the Throne that would put some limits, some restrictions, on that right to prorogue this Parliament, this assembly.
Besides that, there are a number of other issues that I do believe warrant a public discussion, which should have been in the Speech from the Throne. The first issue I will mention is the whole demographic transition that the population of Canada is undergoing. We are becoming an older society. We have fewer children. There is a much higher dependency rate. There are fewer citizens under the age of 18 and a lot more over the age of 65, which of course increases our dependency rate.