Mr. Speaker, the constitutional psychodrama cooked up by the three opposition parties to get around the will of the people and further their partisan interests is not an innocent political game. It has serious consequences for national unity, Canada's economic prosperity and Canadians' financial security.
I will leave it to others to expose the incredible flimsiness and irresponsibility of the arguments the opposition parties are making in an attempt to justify their undemocratic tactics. Others will no doubt also want to point out how the utopian coalition imagined by the opposition could threaten our economy.
However, as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada, I want to draw the attention of this House to how this political crisis could affect our country on the international stage. Here in this place, we are not isolated from the world around us, which is continuing to turn, while our government could be paralyzed by three leaders who were recently rejected by Canadian voters.
The world will not stop turning while the leader of the opposition tries to turn his loss into a win. We must not forget that the Liberal-NDP junta, with its Bloc accomplice—the survivor, the socialist and the sovereigntist—says it does not have confidence in our government.
However, the people of Canada quite recently and quite clearly sent a message that they did not have confidence in these parties to lead the country. And the three would-be putschists will never manage, with the stroke of a pen, to wipe out the ballots of millions of Canadians who did not vote for them. We must not forget that nearly 38% of Canadian voters supported our party on October 14.
A little over 26% voted for the Liberal Party—the worst election result in that party's history—while just over 18% voted for the NDP and 10% for the Bloc Québécois, because Bloc votes have to be counted on a national basis now that the Bloc leader styles himself as a national leader who can dictate policy for Canada while he waits to separate.
No subterfuge, no theatrics can change the fact that Canadians gave the Conservative Party more votes and more seats in this House than any other party.
As my colleague the Minister of Finance has reminded us many times over the last few weeks, Canada is not an island. I would add that, sitting atop Parliament Hill, the opposition members should not imagine that they are above the democratically expressed will of the people.
Why would the votes that got them here in the first place as members of the House, as representatives of their constituents, count for more than the votes that gave our party a strong plurality in the chamber? How can a man who led his party to its most disastrous showing ever think he can anoint himself prime minister with the help of the leader of a party that has never held power and another whose mission in life is to destroy our country?
This is not a scenario that is easy to explain to our allies and partners who are striving mightily to achieve economic prosperity through political stability.
On October 14, when our party was returned to power, Canadians chose a government which they trust to manage the economic crisis that is affecting the whole world.
There are limits to this notion of “strategic voting” that some commentators love: no one in Canada voted for the Conservative Party in the hope that the leader of the opposition would become prime minister, that the New Democrats would become part of the government, and that the sovereignists would hold the keys of power.
Canadians know that hard times require energetic action and courageous choices. They also know that uncertainty and instability scare away investments, increase the cost of money, reduce credit and kill jobs. Let us take a moment to put ourselves in the situation of a foreign investor who is hesitating between a number of countries, because he wants to get an attractive return. Would he be tempted by a country where the government is being held hostage by opposition parties that want to gain power without the support of voters? Would he have confidence in a prime minister living on borrowed times, whose lone ambition could only be to turn over power to another unelected Liberal minister? Would that investor be reassured by the presence, behind the scenes, of a party whose raison d'être is to sabotage Canada, a party that would put Quebec in the worst economic situation of its history?
And no one here is suffering any illusions: the Bloc leader has not become a federalist, and he is definitely not abandoning his sovereignist ideology. In this regard, here is what he said yesterday, immediately after putting back his magic pen into his pocket: “We can have common objectives while remaining committed to who we are. I do remain committed to who we are, and I believe that in making this move, I am helping the cause for which I am in politics.”
By contrast, our plan is geared to the demands imposed by our economic situation and by the international situation. We want to help reform global finance, ensure sound budgeting, secure jobs for Canadian families and communities, expand investments and trade, and make government more effective. In order to achieve these goals, we will cooperate with our international partners to find ways to bolster employment.
That is why the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister recently teamed up with their G20 counterparts, gathered in Washington. I personally had the privilege of representing our country at the APEC summit, held in Peru, where I had the opportunity to meet privately with officials representing some 20 countries. All expressed respect and admiration for the way our economy, and particularly our banking system, is serving our country in these very difficult times.
Since we were elected, we have also taken the necessary steps to ensure growth and stability in our economy. Since 2006, need I recall, we have reduced the federal debt by $37 billion; cut income and other taxes by $200 billion for 2007-2008 and the next five years; lowered the tax rate on new business investments, giving us the lowest rate of all the G7 countries from now to 2010; made unprecedented investments in infrastructure; and invested in science and technology and in education and training.
More recently, to keep our financial system strong and stable, our government took steps to inject liquidity so that financial institutions could continue to lend money to consumers, home buyers and businesses at an affordable cost. We have created a safety net to ensure that our financial institutions are not at a competitive disadvantage in the world.
One of the things we have done is to institute new rules for mortgages guaranteed by the government, so that Canada does not experience a mortgage bubble like the one we have seen in the United States.
We have already taken significant steps to stimulate our economy and we took them before many countries began to take action. Those measures are proportionate to our economy, and in fact are much more significant than the measures taken by the other advanced economies.
Next year, Canadians will pay $31 billion less in income and other taxes, amounting to nearly 2% of GDP, as a result of the tax relief we provided in 2006. Because we were the first to take action, we are in a better position to face the storm today than are the other industrialized countries. In fact, the experts agree that Canada's economic performance is the best among all the G7 countries.
Certainly we can be proud of this economic performance in this time of worldwide financial turbulence. Canada is not immune to the economic slowdown, however, and no one can say with certainty what the future holds for us. In recent months, projections have fluctuated widely everywhere in the world, mainly because of the collapse of financial institutions and the credit freeze. Given what has happened to financial institutions around the world, and in particular in the United States, we have be prepared to face every risk that might arise.
In these difficult times there is at least one thing certain: political instability is particularly bad, and even dangerous, for an economy like ours that is very open to the world and therefore faces strong competition.
I also cannot ignore the situations that our foreign policy will have to deal with, immediately and directly, because of the crisis created by the opposition. For example, because all our ministers had returned to Ottawa, Canada was not represented by any elected member this week at the Summit of NATO Foreign Affairs Ministers, where matters as fundamental as the military operations in Afghanistan and the accession of Georgia and Ukraine to NATO are being discussed.
Tomorrow, in Oslo, Norway, more than 100 states will sign an historic ban on cluster munitions but Canada will not be represented by a minister. So engrossed in its own political games, no opposition party was willing to pair one of its members so that Canada might be present at those important international meetings.
Today or tomorrow, I will be speaking with the new United States Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton.
Is there anyone in this House who believes that our most important trading partner and closest ally is unfazed by what is happening here?
What does the international community think when the main photo from Canada shows a smiling sovereignist leader making a pact with the leader of the sponsorship party, the party of the fiscal imbalance, the party of over centralization, whom he has always vehemently denounced?
The Liberals and the New Democrats are trying to play down the pact they signed with the only party in this House that is an avowed and zealous opponent of national unity. Did they even think of the message this outrageous situation is sending to our partners?
Even President Sarkozy, who recently stated that Canadians are the friends of France and Quebeckers members of the family, must be wondering.
How will the father of the Clarity Act, the heir to Laurier and Trudeau, a student of both Chrétien and Martin, explain to our partners his new-found friendship with the sovereignists? How will he convince the members of the Forum of Federations, whose creation he strongly supported, that the best way for a federation to prosper is to invite anti-federalists to help govern?
In closing, I invite the members of the opposition to look beyond their fantasy scenarios, their partisan concerns, the ministerial positions they covet.
They will see, in our neighbours to the south, a new president who would like nothing better than to strengthen our countries' relations. They will see the President of France and of the European Community working hard to reform international institutions. They will see that ancient hatreds and new terrorism are just as virulent in many regions of the world.
Perhaps they will also see a great country, one that is respected, admired, even envied by countries everywhere, one that needs everyone's good will, and all its energy to continue to make a name for itself in the world and ensure the prosperity and security of its citizens.
That country is Canada and all of us—almost all—have sworn to serve to the best of our abilities.
