Madam Speaker, we are going to go after the bad guys, not the good guys, not the law-abiding hunter and farmer, and not the honest student who got ripped off by a foreign shady consultant. We are not going to go after the good and decent people. We are going to go after the multi-gazillionaires who stash their cash in faraway tax loopholes. We are not going to go after small businesses that are trying to save up for their futures. We would target the bad guys with punishment and reward the good behaviour of good, honest and decent people. We would be a government on the side of those who work hard, pay their taxes and play by the rules. Would that not be a change from what we have right now?
What we are seeing here are the contours of the hope that we are bringing for the Canadian people, hope that is so desperately needed, now more than ever, when the government is broke and everything feels broken, when the Prime Minister divides and distracts, and when everything costs more. Work does not pay. Housing costs have doubled. Crime, chaos, drugs and disorder are becoming more and more common on our streets. The Prime Minister tries to distract from it all by dividing our people on the basis of race, gender and other irrelevant distinctions.
We have a hope for a better way to bring home lower prices, paycheques, homes people can afford, safe streets and our freedom.
Every home is built on a foundation. In fact, the most important part of any home, as my finance critic, who was a home builder, would tell us, is the foundation. It is not the fancy decorations. It is not the new shingles we put out. It is not the colour we paint the front door. It is the foundation that supports the house and holds it up against the storms and the tempests of time, and our house, this House, was built on a solid foundation.
If we look around this place, we see stones. It was built of stone. If we look around the Centre Block building, we can actually see limestone that has fossils in them, which were embedded in that stone millions of years earlier. We are literally looking back millions of years in time when we look at those stones and those incredible fossils that are etched and crystallized in them forever. Why do we build these places with stone? It is to represent the permanence of the principles on which the entire place rests.
We are all just visitors in this place. We do not own these seats. We are lent these seats from the people to whom they belong. It is an 800-year-old tradition that we uphold in this place. It is 800 years since the Magna Carta, the great charter. In 1215 the commoners gathered in the fields of Runnymede and forced King John to reluctantly sign on to this great charter.
If we read the charter, we might say it is filled with all kinds of antiquated concepts that no longer have any relevance today, but we will also see some things that have preserved, such as no arrest without charge, no trial without jury, no confiscation without compensation, and no taxation without representation. All of those things originated in the Magna Carta.
Many of them, our American cousins across the border tried belatedly to take credit for, but really all they were trying to do in the American revolution was defend their rights as Englishmen and Englishwomen. It was actually more of a civil war than it was a war between nations. They were ancient principles that came from generations before and were slowly and painstakingly perfected. The most important principle of all in that document was liberty under the law, the recognition that nobody, including the king, was above the law. Everybody was under the law, and only that way could liberty be upheld for all of the people.
That inheritance is a precious one, and though it is 800 years long, it is only one generation deep. It is the duty of every living generation to take it from those who came before and pass it on intact to those who will come next. That is our duty. We are that living generation.
The great philosopher, the great Conservative philosopher Edmund Burke, said that liberty is a contract between the dead, the living and the yet to be born, and it is the duty of every living generation to pass down the ages. That is why we need to remember how small we are in this place. Our purpose is really to keep alive that tradition. That is the one thing we do as parliamentarians.
It is the most valuable thing of all because everything springs forth from that, such as the ability of people to have the freedom of enterprise to provide for themselves, the freedom of association to get married, to form friendships and other associations and the ability to work together to provide each other with health care and schooling. All of these things come from the foundation of freedom that is passed down through the ages.
If ever we allow that tradition to be broken, then it may never be regained. That is why we treasure so much these institutions that are represented by the stones on these walls, stones I hope my great, great, great, great, great-grandchildren will look up at and see and remember that during this brief time, during our time, we protected the freedom many generations after us would go on to enjoy.