Mr. Speaker, I feel some regret that I did not get an invitation to a lot of those meetings so I did not get to see them first-hand.
One leader of Canada once quipped that Canada works well in practice but not in theory. I think what they were suggesting was that this is a diverse and complicated country with a very strong neighbour to the south, spread over a large territory, and it requires constant vigilance and work to keep us together. All parliamentarians and Canadians know that there have been tough times for the country. However, one of the best ways to stay together, be it a Confederation relationship or any kind of relationship, is by talking; it is by actually getting together and finding common cause.
I take great umbrage with the government, not in the fact that it is Conservative or that it has a particular line on how to handle taxes or certain issues. There is an ideology within the government that it actually wants to break government. It wants to break the very idea and contractual negotiation with the people it seeks to represent and lower expectations to the point that there is no government in their lives whatsoever. As Ronald Reagan once quipped, “...government is not a solution to our problem; government is the problem”.
The Prime Minister of our country could have said the exact same thing. That concerns me because whatever one's political ideological stripe, let us contribute to the health and welfare of our economy and country. Let us get together once in a while. Should it be so difficult for the Prime Minister to humbly accept the offer from the premiers?