Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Nepean—Carleton.
As this is the first opportunity I have had to speak in the House, I wish to begin by thanking the people of Winnipeg South who sent me here. I have been elected four times now, twice in the provincial legislature and twice in this Chamber. I know of no greater honour. I am proud to represent the people of Winnipeg South. They take their politics seriously. They consider the issues in depth and I have to convince them each time that I will work on their behalf.
Mr. Speaker, I congratulate you on your appointment, the Speaker on his election and the other members who serve the House on their appointments. It is going to be a fractious House. We see some of that right now. We have been very well served by the leadership in this Chamber. I congratulate the new members who have been elected to the House and those who are returning. It is an interesting place. Members who are here for the first time will find it a very challenging yet a very productive place if they approach it properly.
This was an interesting year for those of us who live in Manitoba. As my colleague mentioned, we had two very significant natural disasters in Canada although we had several others in other parts of the country. We had the very severe flood in the Saguenay region and we had the very different but equally severe inundation of southern Manitoba.
One of the things that gratified me in the first instance, during the Saguenay flood, was how Manitobans and westerners—I am a western Canadian—rallied. Mr. Hubert Kleysen, who lives in my riding, has a trucking firm. He went throughout western Canada organizing truckloads of furniture and supplies which were sent from western Canadians into the Saguenay.
I can tell the House from personal experience that the reverse happened during the flood in Manitoba. The number of people from all across Canada who phoned, who travelled to Manitoba to help out, who came in to volunteer was really quite overwhelming. Members of this Chamber phoned regularly to offer support, donated money, equipment and supplies. To this day I am approached by people who offer to help out.
There is a movie that was popular about eight to twelve years ago called Starman in which the alien makes the following comment about humans: “You are at your best when things are worst”. That was really demonstrated during the flood in Manitoba.
It hit right at the time of the election. What was the defining moment for me was when the Reform candidate, Greg Yost, a friend of mine and a very decent man, was going door to door during an election distributing literature with my name in it. He was referring people to the flood centre we had set up for assistance. The Conservative candidate was working out of my office, having given his office as a storage space for people who had to move out of their homes. The NDP candidate was regularly sandbagging on teams deployed from the office. The two Conservative members of the provincial legislature that bracket the river on the south end of my riding formed a team with myself and the local city councillor.
It was truly a non-partisan effort that shows what we can do regardless of our political position and philosophy when we come together to work on issues.
There were Conservative and NDP members present in the House in the last Parliament but I want to welcome them both back to official party status. I personally am delighted to see both of them back because they will add a dimension to the debate that was sadly lacking in the last Parliament. If I have a concern about the debate that took place in this Chamber, it is that it was badly divided between two opposition parties that I believe fundamentally support the separation of this country. I welcome the emergence of two other parties that have a national view and a sense of what Canada can become if we can get the regions working together.
I am also delighted, I confess with a particular bias, to see the NDP back in some number. I do not want to see too many of them in the House, but enough of them to participate in the debate.
In the last House we had extremely significant social policy issues that crossed the floor of this House, pieces of legislation that were debated in this House without ever a question from the other side, such as the affects of changes to health care, unemployment and homelessness.
These issues were debated fiercely on this side of the House in this caucus. I chaired the social policy committee and there were terrible fights. But when we came into the House expecting to hear debate, occasionally if a New Democrat could get to his or her feet there might be a question come across. But that happened very rarely because of their lack of numbers in the House. From our friends in the Reform Party there was never a question, never a concern, never an expression of interest in what was happening with the unemployed, the homeless or the sick.
There was some interest in health corporations and privatizing the system so they could make some money out of it, but never the kind of question that was raised by the member from Vancouver East about what happens when thousands of people are sick or dying.
I am interested to see the return of the Conservative Party. I will be very interested in what it will have to say given the base of its support. We have one member from Manitoba who carries a rather onerous responsibility of representing western Canada for that party. I must confess I do not have a good sense of exactly where they sit on some of these issues. I will look forward to what will happen in the debates to come.
My experience in the relatively short time I have been here has been that this place is fascinating and can be very important and productive. There is an enormous amount of work that goes on in committees when members put aside some of their partisanship and focus on how to build an excellent health care system, on how to build a good research and development program and how to deal with issues of equity when you are looking at issues of debt reduction. Some profoundly important work gets done.
I invite members for all parties to participate in that work. We have a very active agenda and an enormous challenge put forward to us by the prime minister when he starts talking about what is going to happen a few years out. The finances are coming together but I think we have a little further to go. We have to be a little cautious. We do not want to find ourselves slipping back into the position we were in which robbed us of any flexibility in this last decade or so.
There are some opportunities. There is an opportunity now to challenge ourselves with the task of building a truly profoundly important future for ourselves and our kids. I appreciate the criticism that comes across the floor, it is important to the debate and I invite more of it. I hope it will be more focused on substance. I was very disappointed to see the member from Burnaby do what he did yesterday because I think this debases the debate in the House. I do not think that contributes to a discussion on how we do things better for the people we represent. Rather, it diminishes the view of this House. I feel much the same way when a Reform member stands up.
To my friends in the Bloc I want to offer one comment. It must be very difficult for members of the Bloc right now. I have some sense compassion for them. I know a number of the members of the Bloc as we worked closely together on the HRD committee and the transport committee.
I have great respect for most of their positions. I differ very strongly on the issues sovereignty and I cannot help but think what it must be like sitting in opposition looking across at a government that has been re-elected with a majority, a considerable accomplishment in this country. It has increased its representation in the province of Quebec. It has managed to wrestle the finances of the country into some sense of control. We have begun to see a significant drop in the unemployment rate. We are not where we want to be but we are heading in the right direction.
I notice that a significant majority of Quebeckers are now saying they feel they would be better off within a united Canada. I enjoy the participation of the members of the Bloc in the debate and in committee. I invite them to participate and perhaps we will find some ways to make Canada better so that they can step aside from the one policy that we find so difficult.
