Mr. Speaker, like others I would like to join in congratulating you on your new assignment and post.
What we are debating here today is an NDP motion that reminds Canadians about everything that is wrong with the concept of the NDP possibly forming government in this country. The motion is all about process; there are no actual solutions in it. The one action item that is in the motion itself is one that, by the way, this government acts on all the time.
I had two round tables and two meetings with other ministers of culture and language this summer, one in Edmonton and one in Winnipeg. We meet with our counterparts all the time.
The Leader of the Opposition did not take the opportunity to mention that he has only now reformed himself into someone who believes that the federal government should work with the provinces. One has to wonder how it is that he is the same person who castigated all of Canada's western premiers as being just messengers of the Prime Minister. He insulted Brad Wall. He insulted Christy Clark. He insulted Alison Redford. One has to assume he insulted the premier of Manitoba as well. He said they are all messengers of the Prime Minister. He had never met any of them but attacked them personally by saying that they were simply messengers, and now he is suggesting that we need to work together.
That member is the first leader of the opposition that I can remember who actively participates in provincial politics, campaigning in a byelection in the province of Ontario trying to elect a New Democrat and doing the same in British Columbia while at the same time saying Parliament should work with the elected governments that may not be New Democrat. For someone who wants to be the prime minister of this country it is irresponsible to attack other premiers whom he has never met and does not know, castigating them as messengers and then involving himself in provincial politics, picking fights with premiers who have been elected by the people of those provinces.
How is it a proper approach for someone who wants to be the prime minister of this country to attack premiers and then to say that this Prime Minister needs to do a better job of working with them? It is pathetic.