Madam Speaker, the motion before the House today reads:
That this House condemns the government for alienating itself from the regions of Canada by failing to identify and address the concerns and issues of those regions, and as a symbolic first step towards taking responsibility for all of the regions of Canada, the government should rename the Liberal committee on western alienation the “Liberal Alienation Committee”.
The depths to which western alienation goes are so deep that I do not really know where to begin or where to end. Let me start with the Liberal alienation committee.
I represent the constituency of Saskatoon—Humboldt in the province of Saskatchewan. The Liberal government did not even bother to appoint a single person from Saskatchewan to the Liberal alienation committee.
Worse than that, three of the ten members of the task force are senators. Ironically one of the biggest sources of western alienation is the unelected, unaccountable and unequal Senate. With these senators there, it makes me wonder exactly how the logistics will work. Will they fly a plane in from Mexico, pick them up with a bus and stop by the penitentiary on the way to the consultations? Exactly how will it work?
Sending senators to Saskatchewan to find out why we feel alienated is like sending Bill Clinton to consult with sexually harassed women. It does not make a lot of sense. They are the source of our alienation. They are the reason we feel resentment and we feel alienated.
The fact of the matter is that southern Ontario and southern Quebec have more members of parliament than all the rest of Canada combined. The modus operandi of those MPs is to pacify the rest of Canada with lip service. We do not have any meaningful representation either here or in the Senate. Policy after policy is passed contrary to the wishes and the interests of western Canadians.
If the Liberal government were interested in addressing the alienation, why did the Prime Minister appoint a senator from Alberta despite the fact that Alberta had already elected the senator it wanted to be appointed? That is a slap in the face.
Then he has the audacity to strike a committee to come out there to find out why we feel alienated. What kind of leadership is that? We know there will be another Senate vacancy because a current Saskatchewan senator has been convicted of an infamous crime and his removal from the Senate is imminent.
Since there is an upcoming election in Saskatchewan why does the Prime Minister not offer Saskatchewan the opportunity to elect its senator and appoint the democratically elected person? He will not though, will he? He is the prime minister in control of the direction of the country. Why does he not reform the Senate? We have been asking for that for years.
I could use many examples, but I will just pick a couple to illustrate the point. There is the language policy of the federal government. I accessed numbers from the public accounts of Canada which showed that last year the federal government spent a quarter of a billion dollars, $250 million, to fund the official languages program.
I find it absolutely incredible that it tries to justify this kind of expenditure while in Saskatchewan hospital waiting lists are growing, our nurses are not paid well and are on strike right now as I speak, ordinary Canadians are having trouble making ends meet, and our taxation levels are absolutely burdensome. The government does not have a problem throwing a quarter of a million dollars into a program that quite frankly alienates and irritates us.
I will give another example. There is currently an income crisis among farmers in Saskatchewan. In January, while the House was not sitting, the eight Reform members of parliament from Saskatchewan conducted an extensive series of town hall meetings throughout the entire province to hear from farmers, to hear their views. It was publicly announced and open to everybody including the agriculture minister, but where was he? He was on vacation in the sunny south.
I do not begrudge the minister taking a vacation once in a while, but did he have to do it at the exact time we were facing a crisis which falls within the purview of his responsibilities as minister of agriculture? Why was he not out there listening to the concerns of farmers? Nonetheless, I do not mind doing it. That is my job and I was pleased to be part of that process.
The eight Reform MPs from Saskatchewan put together a two page letter which outlined the concerns of farmers and suggested ways the agriculture minister could change the program to meet the needs of the farmers it was supposedly designed to help. That letter was written on February 4 and there was no response from the agriculture minister.
On February 22 I sent him another letter asking for a response, and there was no response. On March 29 I urgently appealed to him. I pointed out that spring was right around the corner, that farmers were in a crunch, and that more deficiencies in the program had revealed themselves since he has made it official and the forms were now available. The program is fraught with problems and difficulties. He responded yesterday, the day before we had the debate on western alienation. Is that not ironic?
The Liberal government wants to know why we feel alienated. We are consulting the people. As an elected representative I write letters to the minister. I come before the House of Commons to explain and debate the issues, and it falls on deaf ears. He would not even respond to my letter.
I will use another example, that of the minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board. All the times last year we were before the House of Commons to debate reforms to the Canadian Wheat Board which we advocate must happen, we spoke on behalf of the farmers who elected us and sent us here. The minister for the Canadian Wheat Board was not here once to hear us. He was here when he spoke at the outset of consideration of the bill and then he was gone.
We were here talking to the walls and they wonder why we feel alienated. Every day we come before the House to explain the feelings of westerners. I am a westerner; I represent westerners. They ignore us and then strike a Liberal alienation committee to find out why westerners feel alienated.
The government will not table its schedule of where the Liberal alienation committee will be. It does not want the people to know where it will be because it will get flak.
I definitely speak for the vast majority of the residents of Saskatchewan. Perhaps it is not unanimous but it is close. Firearm registration, as everybody knows, will do nothing but target law-abiding owners of firearms. They look to me for leadership and ask me to do something.
I had a motion before the House in September to repeal the legislation and replace it with legislation that targets the illegal use of firearms. The Liberals voted against it. Last month I tabled a private member's bill that targets the criminal use of firearms, the 10-20 life law which will be debated Thursday evening in the House. What did the Liberal committee do? It was deemed non-votable.
I see my time is running short. That is unfortunate because I have many examples; I am barely getting started. In closing, I did not have an opportunity to speak to the last Liberal speaker. He mentioned the Canada Foundation for Innovation fund and the Synchrotron light source of Saskatoon. I would like him to know that when the former Liberal MP from that riding was defeated the next day she said that Saskatchewan would pay for not re-electing a Liberal MP.
Damage control went in and some Liberal strategists negated that. At a press conference last month when the decision was announced, her name and the name of another former Liberal MP from Saskatoon were mentioned. Talk about a political ploy. The Minister of Industry and the minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board, the only Liberal MP from Saskatchewan, were there.
If this is an arm's length fund that administers funds for basic research, which is good and which it should, what are the Liberal MPs and ministers doing there? They are making political hay out of it and westerners resent that. We do not need our votes bought. We want accountable government.