The Liberal Opposition: Fighting for Canadians

The Liberal Opposition ends the 39th session of Parliament with a list of accomplishments all Canadians can be proud off, Liberal Opposition Leader Bill Graham said today.
“Over the last five months, Liberals have been putting forward legislation that matters to Canadians and holding the minority Conservative government to account,” Mr. Graham said.

The Liberal Opposition worked hard this session to ensure that Canada’s aboriginal communities are not forgotten by the Conservative government.
“Working cooperatively toward the well-being of the first nations, the Métis nation and the Inuit was a high priority of the previous Liberal government,” says MP Tina Keeper, a member of the Norway House Cree Nation. “It has remained a prime concern for the opposition from the very beginning of this new Parliament.”

In Opposition, Liberals passed a Private Member’s Bill calling on the Conservative government to implement the Kelowna Accord and successfully pressured the government to honour the Liberal agreement on residential schools.
We also raised serious questions about the judgment and leadership of the Member for Saskatoon-Wanuskewin, forcing him to resign as Chair of the House Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development.

Liberals have also pressured the government to ensure Canada meets its global climate change obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. By helping to pass an Opposition motion calling on the government to respect Canada’s Kyoto commitments, and exposing the Conservatives’ complete lack of climate change policy, our opposition has been fighting hard to keep our planet’s interests at the forefront of Canadians’ policy agenda.
By contrast, the Conservative government has been pushing through regressive policies that will hurt Canadians.

“The 39th session of Parliament was a demonstration of the stunning ‘Harpocrisy’ of this government,” Mr. Graham continued. “What we ended up with was a government intent on raising taxes, turning their backs on the environment, abandoning farmers, softwood lumber producers, working parents and Aboriginals, and breaking one election promise after another regarding accountability and transparency in government.”
Thanks to 13 years of Liberal governments, Prime Minister Stephen Harper inherited the strongest financial position of any incoming government in Canadian history. Despite this, the Conservatives delivered a budget that increases income taxes for low-income Canadians, cuts billions of dollars from social programs and contains no vision for the economic progress of our nation.

Here is a sampling of some of the many hypocritical and regressive actions taken by this government this session:
Mr. Harper ran an entire election campaign on openness and accountability in government, and then implemented an Accountability Act that will actually increase government secrecy and make it less accountable.

The Prime Minister appointed a former lobbyist as Defence Minister, who is now awarding contracts to his political friends. His Health Minister, Tony Clement – embroiled in a conflict-of-interest controversy over his stake in a pharmaceutical giant – recently awarded a sole-sourced contract to a friend in pharmaceuticals.

Mr. Harper consistently put a tight muzzle on his caucus and battled the media for months in order to restrict the flow of information to the public.
After campaigning for years against any softwood lumber deal that does not return 100 percent of duties paid to the U.S., Mr. Harper decided to push through a highly politicized deal which all industry representatives oppose for putting more than $1 billion into the hands of American lumber competitors.

The Harper government repeatedly ignored expert opinions on taxes, the environment and crime in order to score cheap political points with policies that do nothing to help low- and middle-income Canadians, decrease greenhouse gas emissions or lower crime rates.
The Conservatives introduced legislation to scrap the federal gun registry – despite the fact that the majority of law enforcement officers want it to remain.

The Prime Minister has also made a pledge to re-open the divisive same-sex marriage debate in the fall in the hopes of taking away this fundamental right from gay and lesbian Canadians.
In the face of the Conservatives’ fend-for-yourself Canada, the Liberal Party will ensure that our progressive values will be upheld by Parliament. We have worked hard this session to defend the interests of all Canadians. We will continue to listen and learn from our constituents over the summer months to ensure that their voices will be heard in Ottawa this fall.