Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the speech made by my hon. colleague from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek. I appreciated and enjoyed his comments.
I wonder if he would agree with my assessment of part of what is happening here. We have seen that whenever the government does not like the way things are going, it brings forward one of its crime bills. In fact, at times over the past few years we have seen some of the so-called tough-on-crime bills languish. They just sat around for months when the government did not bother to call them. The Conservatives would then try to blame this side of the House or blame the Senate or whomever for the fact that those bills had not gone forward. In fact, the government had not put them on the order paper each day to make that happen. They had not brought them forward.
When the government wants to change the channel, it tries to create fear in people. We have seen that with the census. The Conservatives want people to be afraid that those terrible census takers are going to arrest them. My hon. colleague from Abbotsford was actually claiming a few minutes ago that this is the reason we have the census. I do not think there is a question on there asking if one has been arrested or jailed for not answering the long-form census. In fact, no one has ever been arrested for that.
We have seen the fear the Conservatives create by suggesting that Russian bombers, propellor aircraft that are 40 years old that do not even enter Canadian airspace, are a huge threat to us. Therefore, we need these F-35s, these $16 billion worth of fighters. I wonder if my colleague would agree with that.