Mr. Speaker, it is quite a heated debate we are having here today. Certainly the hot air is adding to the climate change the government is working so hard against. We are adding more to it when I hear the pomposity from the other side.
In a recent poll 69% of Canadians said they find the federal government corrupt. We are all here together. The problem is that everybody gets tarred with the same brush. Out of 301 people there are bound to be a few bad apples. We have seen evidence of that in the last little while. Some 69% of Canadians hold us in contempt for the jobs we are not doing here on their behalf. That is despicable and we have to rightly clean that up. The job of the official opposition is to hold the government to account and to bring to the light of day a lot of the things that are wrongheaded and going in the wrong direction.
Out west we had evidence of that from a couple of terms ago with Bill C-68, the firearms bill. A cost of $85 million was talked about. It is now 10 times that and growing and we still have seen absolutely no results.
The Liberals' own pollsters would tell them it is not working to the extent they thought it would so people hold us in contempt. We are all tarred with the same brush. We start to bring programs like that into the light of day and point out the problems with them. We amend things in committee but they never get adopted. We have private members' business that has gone south. Many members over there are nodding their heads because that is their avenue to get their issues before the House of Commons and they have been stymied as well. They cannot seem to get them through and when they do, there might be an hour of debate and then it is scrapped, it is gone. The item cannot be made votable.
We are all caught in that. That leads to low voter turnout. If we look at the last federal election and some of the byelections, there has been low voter turnout. People have written off the federal government system. They see that we are incorrigible and we are corruptible and they write us all off. They flush us all with the same bath water which is unfortunate.
The Liberals did not like those numbers so they had their own pollster do a poll talking about just their party because certainly it could not be them. That poll showed that 45% of Canadians polled blame it on the front bench, the executive of the federal government. That is unfortunate but there are things we can do about it.
The members opposite today have been saying we are not fulfilling the role of the official opposition, that we are not bringing to the light of day agriculture issues, softwood lumber, health care and so on. I heard the senior minister for Saskatchewan on a radio talk show last week. We cannot put on the air shows that we usually have. Moose Jaw has a huge air show. Usually 45,000 to 50,000 people go to it. The one in Saskatoon is just starting to grow with 30,000 to 35,000 people who come to see it. There are other ones across the country. They cannot afford the liability insurance that is now demanded to put those shows on. The government House leader said on the radio that the government cannot afford that because it is working so diligently putting all of the money into agriculture, the softwood file and health care.
Nobody in the agriculture sector has seen any money. The member opposite who just spoke said it is because of the Liberal backbench that farmers were saved. I guess now we know who to blame. If it is the Liberal backbench that gave us AIDA and CFIP and took the money out of crop insurance, then it is their fault. It was not the minister of agriculture after all, it is the backbench. How ridiculous.
Money has been gutted out of health care but we still have no money for a lot of other programs. The softwood lumber file bubbled away for five years and here we are paying a 27.2% tariff. Five years slipped by. The government did not change but a few of the faces over there did. The same folks let it percolate for five years and here we are with a problem. If that is their attention to agriculture, softwood and health care, no wonder people hold us in contempt and say that we are incorrigible and they want to make some changes.
The Prime Minister today announced a new glorious program that will make everything better. He will bring in some more rules and add some more legislation. Many of those are common sense and we cannot disagree with some of them but those same promises were made in 1993 in the first red book. Nobody ever delivered on those.
Where is this ethics commissioner who was going to be independent and table his reports with parliament? It did not happen. We finally got an ethics counsellor with basically a set of training wheels for the front bench. He does not report to anybody but the Prime Minister because that is who hired him.
Now we are being promised another one. Should we believe it this time, the second, third or fourth time? It is just like some of the legislation brought forward; it never quite happens the way it was set out.
There are some good things in those eight points but we are asking, why now? Why is it finally today? I guess the biggest reason, and most people are clueing into this, is that another minister is in trouble.
I understand it is only an $800 bill, but that is not the point. It is not the money. As one person said in question period today, it is not what he or his family gave, the $800, but it is what he got. It is what Claude Boulay, the head of Everest communications got. He got the minister's ear for two or three days, whatever it was. It was an inside track. Shortly after that we saw another $760,000 of ad contracts funnelled to Groupe Everest. That is a problem.
If those guys cannot see that and why people are upset with the way the Liberals are governing the country, then we have a problem. We will have a lower voter turnout in the next election and the status quo will continue. That is great for them but it certainly is not good for Canadians. Canadians deserve better.
The Prime Minister took credit for sweeping changes he has made since 1993. The auditor general can now report to parliament four times a year. Imagine that. How great. The problem is that nobody listens to what she reports. Nobody acts on it.
The auditor general brings in scathing indictments, things like who is minding the store. There are people who should face criminal charges. She said to bring in the RCMP because she thought it was outrageous. Four times a year she gets to say that. It is not the report but the action which is never taken that encourages Canadians to say that we are corrupt and contemptible. I am tired of being tarred with that brush. We do some great work over here and bring to light a lot of the problems.
The Prime Minister talked about having a great rah-rah party for $10,000 a hit. That is wonderful but I cannot see any real people being able to afford the $10,000. Again that gets people his ear for that length of time. I know a lot of people in western Canada would pay $10,000 to get an hour of the Prime Minister's time but they would like to see him sitting on the seat of a dunk tank before they would put the $10,000 there. They would have some fun and maybe he would raise some money. Let us get real.
Canada will sponsor and fund an anti-corruption summit next fall from October 13 to 16. People will come from around the globe. We are seventh out of 91 in the way we handle our affairs. We are in the top 10% but is that good enough? We are going to sponsor a corruption seminar. I guess we are going to tell them what they can and cannot get away with. We are hoping that we bring to the light of day a whole lot more things that are starting to worm their way out.
The next thing the Prime Minister talked about in his eight points was a standalone code of conduct for MPs and senators. He just happened to skip right over the people on the front bench. They supposedly already have one that nobody has ever seen. We do not know what is in it, other than that the ethics counsellor gets to decide what is good and what is not. That is ridiculous. Now there will be a code of conduct for MPs and senators.
I will quote what a Liberal MP said yesterday after caucus. The member for Mississauga West said that they do great work there. Apparently they do. Here is the quote from the National Post :
“Are we the problem?” one MP, who attended yesterday's caucus, said. “It's just amazing. As if we have a lot of clout.... It's going to be interesting to see how [the new rules] go over in caucus. I'm sure members are going to start saying, 'How are we the problem?'”
That is absolutely bang on. It tells us how impotent they are as backbenchers and the frustration level rises. It will be interesting to see a lot of this stuff hit the fan in the next little while.
A code of conduct will come into play for the others who do not have access to public funds like those on the front bench who have discretionary spending amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. Where is the retribution, clawbacks and chance for taxpayers to rear up and say they want the money back?
On Groupaction there were three reports for $1.6 million. We got some photocopied paper. I guess that same photocopy paper works for affidavits, bum cheques and everything else. It is just amazing that the Liberals think they can get away with it by throwing some smoke in front of the fan. Canadians are supposed to bow and say “Well, that is government. They are unaccountable and we cannot touch them”. Yes they can. The best thing Canadians can do is rear up on their high horse and tell those folks it is unacceptable behaviour and they will not tolerate it.