Mr. Speaker, despite my hon. colleague's interruption, I must say, I am pleased to see a member stand up in the House of Commons to defend our farmers.
Our canola farmers are really suffering right now as a result of trade action imposed by another country, China. The Conservative Party just wants to hold a debate so we can protect those farmers and help them continue to sell their top-quality product internationally.
I am extremely surprised that the government does not want to take part in such a debate, and I think it is disgusting that this government is showing such disregard for a crisis of this magnitude. I realize that there are no Liberal members representing western Canadian farmers, but the Prime Minister is supposed to represent all Canadians, regardless of whether they voted for the Liberal Party.
This gives me an opportunity to point out just how divided our country is becoming. Three years ago, everyone was saying that there was no more Bloc Québécois and that nobody was talking about Quebec sovereignty any more. After 10 years under the Harper government, it is true that many Quebeckers did not agree with all of the Conservative policies or with the Conservative Party. I will admit that, but I think that everyone can at least agree that the sovereignist movement had practically disappeared. The Bloc Québécois and the Parti Québécois were no longer a political force. What a change compared to the Liberal years in which the sovereignist movement was able to feed off the sponsorship scandal.
It was a huge success for the former Conservative government to see that, in 2015, the sovereignist movement had all but died out across the country. I think that is because the Harper government, regardless of whether people agreed with its intentions or not, respected the autonomy of the provinces and their citizens. It reduced the power of politicians in Ottawa and gave more power to people in our communities. That helped everyone to be able to see themselves as part of a Canada that could meet their needs, even if they did not vote for the Conservative Party.
Today, after the government has been in power for three years, the Bloc Québécois's standing is up in the polls. Furthermore, in western Canada, polls show that almost half of Albertans are open to sovereignty. That is a tragedy.
I was born in Calgary and spent more than 20 years in southern Alberta. I never would have believed that westerners would be talking about sovereignty. It is true that there has always been some concern and complaints about the federal government's powers, but we never spoke about sovereignty in western Canada when I was growing up. Now, voices are being raised and we see a division, and that is exactly what we should avoid.
We need a prime minister who unites Canadians from coast to coast to coast and creates a wonderful country that all Canadians can be extremely proud of.
I think that Albertans and all westerners believe in Canada. They love Canada and are very patriotic. However, when the Prime Minister constantly tries to attack them with his policies on pipelines, the carbon tax and others that target western Canada's economy, it is understandable that there is such frustration in the west.
In my view, a government formed by our Conservative leader would bring together Canadians in a respectful environment that ensures the maximum amount of freedom for all provinces and all Canadians. That is the story of our country, and prime ministers, such as Wilfrid Laurier, united Canadians by doing exactly that.
Sometimes we forget that, in the early 1900s, Wilfrid Laurier was the most popular leader in the west. At that time, the Liberal Party of Canada was in favour of a free market, free trade and the power and autonomy of all provinces. Although hard to believe today, that is why the Liberal Party of Canada was popular in the Prairies.
However, the Liberals have moved away from economic openness in favour of having federal politicians control everything. This is an attempt to centralize all powers, but it ultimately ends up dividing all Canadians. This is why the Conservative Party of Canada will diminish the power of governments and increase the power of Canadians, which will, in turn, bring all Canadians together.
We have a team that is speaking about the Prime Minister's personal and political interference in the SNC-Lavalin scandal. It is speaking about the cover-up budget that is designed to make Canadians forget about that political interference. It is also shifting attention to the issues that the Prime Minister is incapable of managing, like the multi-billion dollar attack by the Chinese government on our canola producers.
The Prime Minister is incapable of responding to these kinds of international crises because he is absolutely consumed with scandal. He and his party are meeting right now to talk about how they can punish courageous whistle-blowers. They are not meeting with representatives of the People's Republic of China to get tariff penalties removed. They are too busy trying to cover up a scandal of the Prime Minister's own making.
It not just ethical deterioration that we see in this scandal; it is the distraction that it causes. Would people not like to know right now that the Prime Minister is at his desk busily working on a strategy to end the trade attack by China? He is not. He is busy, huddled with advisers, trying to find a way to punish whistle-blowers, courageous women in his own party, for daring to tell the truth about his conduct.
Would people not like to know that he is busily on his phone with his ambassador in Washington, discussing a plan to end Trump's tariffs on steel, aluminum and softwood, or to end Trump's buy America policy that discriminates against Canada? No, he is not doing that. Right now he is busy, huddled with a group of political advisers, trying to hatch a plan to cover up a scandal and punish the women who exposed it.
Would people not like to know that the Prime Minister is busy meeting with financial officials, urgently crafting a plan to phase out the deficit over the medium term and prepare us for troubled times that might be in our future? Well, we know that even if he were not distracted by scandal, the deficit would not be of the least bit of concern. We know that the Prime Minister thinks budgets balance themselves.
I will cede the floor to you, Mr. Speaker, for Standing Order 31, Statements by Members, by saying that we need a Prime Minister who is not capsizing in his own ship of corruption and scandal, but instead is working hard every day to serve the Canadian people and get the job done, so Canadians can get ahead.