Madam Speaker, exactly. I proclaim that I have been a hypocrite. When I was in opposition, the tone that I used and the way that I asked questions could have been different. I think I often asked the right questions in the wrong way. I do not have a problem acknowledging that the tenor and tone with which I approached issues needed to change. I have tried to address that, and I will continue to.
All I am saying is that when we fight over the small things, the big things get hidden. Each of us knows that when we see and hear truth and when we distort it, exaggerate it and continue to play that game, it makes it feel to others that we do not see truth. It is not enough for us to see truth in private rooms. It is not enough for us to see truth in corridors. We have to speak it in a chamber like this.
The question that we have to ask now is not what comma will come after our names, because in 100 years' time no one will read that Wikipedia entry. All of us, I dare say, will be forgotten, me included. However, it is up to us to meet the challenge of the time that we are in, and I think we have a lot to learn from each other. I am here today to say that the challenges that our country faces cannot be faced unless we listen to one another. I approach this in the same way.
Let me go back to Remembrance Day. A long-time friend shared a story with me that I had never heard before from the Battle of the Somme. He talked about his grandfather. His grandfather saved not one, not two, not three but four Canadian soldiers, and as he was dragging the fourth soldier back, he was shot and killed. We have to ask this question: How many people would he have saved had his life not been taken? I think it is worth asking, for all of us, what was in his heart as he charged into certain danger.
What was in his heart as he charged into certain danger was hope for a better world, gratitude for what he had and love for his fellow man. I do not think it is too much to ask of all of us, regardless of our differences, to approach this in the same way. When we approach the issues of our time with grievance and anger, it never works. We could do it, and we could talk about freedom. There is absolutely a freedom to being full of grievance, bitterness, anger and a feeling that we are not getting what we want and what we deserve, and we have a right to do that, but this has led to very dark places.
I would submit that true freedom, actual freedom, is the ability to speak truth but also hear truth and be truly as we are. Evil does not hide in self-expression. Evil hides in the denial of truth. We are facing forces that would rip apart our democracies, and that is no exaggeration. If we are serious about saving liberal democracy, then I think it is time we return to the principles of the enlightened. In the enlightenment, the key and most powerful insight was the acknowledgement of what we do not know and the courage to use science and data to find out what is true.
In this chamber, if we can come to know the problems of our day, meaning the enormous difficulties we have, while being honest about the challenges that are in front of us and being truthful about what the solutions might be, then we can be worthy of the incredible honour we have of being in this chamber. I would submit that the only way forward in this time is for us to figure that out. If we cannot figure it out in this chamber and build a bridge to one another with our differences here in the chamber, then how can we expect the country to heal? How can we expect our neighbours to find that bridge?
I will end on this note. As we think of Remembrance Day and we think of battles fought against the Nazis and other evil regimes, the battle that we fight today is not across a trench or an ocean. It is not through barbed wire. It is in our own hearts.
I had a conversation with a wonderful fellow, and it did not have anything to do with politics. I met him out in Kitchener. He runs a grocery store called Dutchie's. His name is Mike and he has courage. He said it used to be that when we saw something as ridiculous as a seven-dollar head of lettuce, a person would create a new business and could make a huge profit selling it at five dollars or four dollars. He said that people are tired and they have gone through so much. They do not want to take a chance or take a risk. They are afraid to hope.
Humanity has gone through much darker hours. When we look at what happened in World War I when people were dealing with the Spanish flu, they longed to go back to the Victorian age, to the time of corsets and dinner parties. However, they could not have imagined the prosperity that lay before them in the 1920s.
In the 1920s, when they were celebrating, they were rocked by the Great Depression, and then a world war and great darkness. They longed to go back to the 1920s, to a period of flapper girls and prohibition parties. Of course, they could not have imagined the prosperity that was about to greet them in the 1950s and 1960s.
It is true, again, that with a period of great inflation and energy shortages at the end of the 1970s and leading into the early 1980s, people wanted to go back to the glory of the 1950s and 1960s. We always talk about going back, but we forget that if we do hard things and we continue to move forward, there lies a prosperity that we cannot imagine.
That prosperity, I think, is going to be rooted in very different motivations than what we have seen before. Yes, people will still want to put food on the table. Yes, people will still want a roof over their heads. Yes, people will still want nice things. However, they want purpose. They want to wake up in the morning and believe that they are part of something bigger than just their lives.
I think our goal, not just as a government but as a Parliament, is to dream with them, to hear their dreams and to listen to somebody like Mike, who is imagining a different future, trying to change the way the grocery industry works, trying to upend convention and taking chances and risks. For each of us, regardless of our political party, it is about saying he has it right. Taking a bet on our universe, taking a bet on good and taking a bet on the moral arc of history is what we should all be doing. We should not be stoking fear or amplifying grievances, but lifting up every person we see trying in these hard times.
What does that have to do with extending hours? It has to do with what kind of debate we have in the chamber. It has to do with what kind of conversation we have with each other about the times we are in. Yes, we can be cynical. Yes, we can call each other names. Yes, we can write each other off. However, if we cannot figure it out, who is supposed to?