Ken Dryden

[Human Resources and Social Development, November 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, when I travel across the country, I hear the same thing, from those with disabilities, from those who cannot read, from students, from aboriginals. I ask them what the government is doing and they say nothing or next to nothing: from seniors, from parents needing to work who have children needing to learn, nothing; from the poor, nothing; from people who live the experience, not just formulate life from their own minds, anything big, tough, anything that has to be taken on together, nothing.

When will the government take this special opportunity and really do something?

[Government Policies, June 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, when one does not give answers for a while, people might still assume one has them, then months pass and they wonder.

It has been the last few weeks, having governed to campaign, suddenly with no campaign, the Conservative government has shown clearly that it has no purpose, no direction, no idea of what to do. In 17 months it has gone from decisive to decisively wrong to decisively decisive. There is nothing else there. The government became so old, so fast.

When will the Prime Minister understand what the public already knows? For the Conservative government the problem is not just not giving answers, it is not having them.

[Government Policies, June 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians deserve answers, but the government has never felt the need to give them, not to ordinary people through the media or question period; not to members of Parliament in committees, the unbelievable dirty tricks manual; not to groups that have made the environment, literacy, women, you name it, Mr. Speaker, their life's work. We can ask them. They cannot even get a meeting.

Canada works because with more potential differences than any other country, we talk, we listen, we do not purposely strategically divide. The current Prime Minister is different. He is the great divider.

When will the Prime Minister begin offering Canadians real answers?

[Government Policies, June 18th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, that is the problem with a government just campaigning, not governing. Then it is all about politics, about creating divisions, wedges: with me or against me, citizen against citizen, group against group, and province against province. This is a far more divided country now than we were 16 months ago.

When will the Prime Minister realize what the public already knows to be true? This government is not new, was never new and was cynical and politically obsessed from the beginning. This government was born old.

[Government Policies, June 18th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, there is a pattern to the government's difficulty with the truth. The Prime Minister shifts direction not because he realizes he got things wrong, but because he realizes he got the politics of them wrong.

Then, not a real believer himself, he is so shocked at people who really do believe in the environment, who really do believe in gun control, and who really do believe that a real future for Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador needs the Atlantic accord, the trouble begins.

So he delivers a little, spins big and tries desperately to orchestrate an election before people notice the difference. When will the Prime Minister realize that it is time for the truth?

[The Environment, June 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, getting it done wrong, decisively wrong; set the bar low and you get low.

How will history write about the 16 months of the Conservative government? About just how little was attempted, about just how little was done. For the government it has all been a campaign, a lot of politics and manoeuvring, signifying almost nothing.

With an election no longer imminent, the Conservatives have no direction and no idea what to do. When will they learn? A prime minister, a real leader, campaigns to govern, he does not govern to campaign.

[The Environment, June 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, we saw it again last week: the science of climate change and the great majority of the G-8 saying one thing, the Prime Minister another, his pride always getting it done; his problem, Canada's problem, always the wrong “it”.

On the environment, Africa, our role in the world, our relations with the provinces, his strategy is to set the bar low, really really low, and then hit it decisively and call that success, but success for whom? For him politically? Maybe, but for Canadians, for the world, no.

When will the Prime Minister understand that?

[National Unity, June 1st, 2007]

Once again, Mr. Speaker, it is divide, divide, divide. For 16 months for this Prime Minister, no question matters unless it is a political question. It is all about creating wedges and divides, province against province, group against group, Canadian against Canadian.

It is all about scoring political points, just like he tried to do yesterday: divide, divide, divide. When will the Prime Minister truly understand that he is the prime minister of all Canadians?

[National Unity, June 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, again and again the Prime Minister has tried to decide for all of us who is a real Canadian.

In 1995 the current Leader of the Opposition was in Quebec fighting for the future of this country.

As the deputy leader wrote his books and did his important work, thousands of Canadians reacted with pride.

What were the rest of us, including the Prime Minister, doing at that time?

Millions of Canadians have not spent all their lives in Canada. They grew up in Sri Lanka and Lebanon and brought all their learning here.

They are Canadians, real Canadians. When will the Prime Minister understand that?

[National Defence, June 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Prime Minister said:

When the Leader of the Opposition is able to stand in uniform and serve his country, then I will care about his opinion of the performance of the Minister of National Defence.

This is a truly disturbing remark. It says that the Prime Minister, who, as he said, has never been in uniform, has no right to judge the performance of his own minister. It says the military is beyond the control and direction of the people.

Who has the right to call the shots? Who is calling the shots?