I know. I agree. The words were even difficult coming out of my mouth.
Mr. Speaker, in any event, if I were one of the members who are going to be assembling this weekend to pass judgment on the Leader of the Opposition, I would seriously reflect on that and ask, “What has he learned? Has he learned anything? Is he going to be different? Will he do anything differently than he used to?” I gave him the opportunity to very plainly suggest what that might be, and he completely neglected to suggest even one thing that he might do differently.
This comes back to the theme of my discussion, how I started, and what I have spoken about a number of times in the House as it relates to the opposition. The Conservatives are just not understanding what they are supposed to be doing here. His Majesty's official opposition has a role to play, and that role is to challenge the government to do better, and to encourage the government to make better policy better. It is not to just block everything and to systematically, every single time, prevent anything from moving forward. Unfortunately, that is what we continue to see.
This is an opportunity for Canadians, in particular, to sit back and actually reflect on this and to think about where the Conservative Party of Canada is going and who the Conservative Party of Canada is.
Earlier the member for York—Durham talked about Sir John A. Macdonald. I will remind him that when Sir John A. Macdonald sat in the House, he was a Liberal-Conservative. It was a completely different political party. He has nothing to do with that party, and I think I could go out on a limb and say that even Sir John A. Macdonald was more progressive than the newly reformed party that we have now.
More importantly, the member for York—Durham brought up that city council has decided to remove the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald from City Park in Kingston. I want to ask the member something, because he brought it up in his debate today. Does he know that not only did 12 out of 13 city councillors vote in favour of removing the statue but, more importantly, that the Conservative candidate who ran against me in the last election, the mayor of the city, the Conservative candidate in Kingston and the Islands, voted in favour of removing the statue? If he had his way, he would be sitting next to the member right now.
Of course, the good people of Kingston and the Islands saw better than to send a Conservative here. The last time they did that was in 1984, when they sent Flora MacDonald here, a truly progressive Conservative. However, I digress. The reality of the situation is that the current Conservative Party is not the Conservative party of Sir John A. Macdonald, and it is certainly not the Conservative party of Flora MacDonald or any relatively contemporary Conservative.
I certainly got a kick out of one of the Conservative members when asking a question of the Leader of the Opposition a few moments ago. Let us hark back to the days of Stephen Harper. The member said that this was the 20th anniversary of Stephen Harper and that he was so great. Meanwhile, if we try to bring up Stephen Harper in the House, we are always criticized, asked why we are bringing him up as it was so long ago, and why we are living in days gone by.
I will end with this. The reality of the situation is that this particular motion is just in line with everything else we have seen from the Conservatives, everything I have become accustomed to seeing over my 10-plus years in the House, which is theatre. The motion is intended to drive donations. It is intended to help the leader, supposedly, with his position as he goes into his judgment convention this weekend. This is nothing more than theatre. I would really encourage and ask the Conservatives to actually come here with something meaningful, to bring forward some solutions and propose some ideas that can genuinely change the lives of Canadians.
I heard the member for York—Durham give his speech earlier. He was trying to answer questions by asking what we are doing and what we are putting forward. The Conservatives offer nothing in terms of solutions; all they do is criticize. The member got up and started to go on about how people on this side of the House are not focused on the issues of the day and not living in reality. Then I had to listen to 10 minutes of his talking about Sir John A. Macdonald.
It is time for the Conservatives to wake up, realize what their job is in the House and start to actually do things that are meaningful for Canadians, not just fundraise off the clips they make in the House and prime themselves for the conventions that are coming up later this week.