Mr. Speaker, as someone who represents a riding that I think has more bookstores than any other riding in the country, I cannot tell the House how refreshing it is to hear a Conservative actually talk about literature and books.
For ten long years, the cuts to the Canada Council, the cuts to the programs that supported authors and the publishing industry, the damage done by the copyright reforms to publishing and the authors in this country was astonishing, a shameful record on literature.
However, if the member opposite is actually interested in reading more books, I would like to suggest a few titles for him: Beautiful Losers: Essays on the Failure of ...Conservatism, Dismantling Canada: ...New Conservative Agenda, and my favourite one that I could really recommend, The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing.
Would the member opposite like to reflect on the fact that the budgets that his party produced prior to the recession, during the recession, after the recession, and, even now, have landed us in more debt than any other government in modern Canadian history? Why do the Conservatives think they have any right to lecture anyone on fiscal management when they put $160 billion of debt on the backs of their children?