Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to the opposition motion before us. I have been spending time listening to this today, and I cannot help but wonder who the real audience for it is.
I believe that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources really hit the nail on the head a few moments ago when he said that the intended audience of the motion is the folks who will be assembling in Calgary this weekend. That is probably the best answer to that question that I have heard today.
The reality is that when I look at the motion, I just think to myself that it is literally everything the Conservative Party ran on last April, and it was rejected. Canadians said, “No, we are not interested in that platform. We are interested in something else, something that the Liberals are offering.” That is what we ended up with; that is where we are. We formed a government based on our platform. The Conservatives did not form a government based on their platform, which is basically what the motion today is.
The parliamentary secretary's explanation is probably the best one: that the motion is intended for an audience in Calgary later this week and weekend, when there is an opportunity for the membership of the Conservative Party to have its say as to whether or not the current Leader of the Opposition should continue in that role.
I found it really interesting. The Leader of the Opposition spoke a few moments ago, and I had the opportunity to ask him a question afterwards. I stood up, and I am sure if members go back and watch the tape they will see I was offering him an opportunity. I very plainly said to the Leader of the Opposition that the motion is basically what Conservative members ran on, and Canadians rejected it in April last year. I asked him why Conservatives were putting the motion forward and, more importantly, if could he talk about what he had learned since then and how he was going to do things differently.
This was an opportunity for the Leader of the Opposition to genuinely be reflective. He could have used that clip, without my question, looked at the camera and talked to Canadians about what he learned from that experience of going from a 25-point lead in the polls to getting clobbered by the current Prime Minister. He could have used the opportunity to reflect on that and say he did learn a lot, and what he would start to do differently.
Did he take that opportunity to be reflective and to genuinely put to Canadians how he will be different? No, and, as a matter of fact, he seemed to double down. He used the opportunity to make a little partisan jab toward me, and he basically said that this is what he ran on in the last election, what he still believes, and what he is still going to be suggesting to his Conservative membership that they should keep pushing toward.
If I were a card-carrying Conservative and I were heading into this—