What the government has to do, if it wants to govern for any length of time, is it must appeal primarily to the third parties in the House of Commons to get them to support it.
We have to remember we're in a global economy. The purpose of fiscal stimulus is not simply to sustain activity in our national economies, but to help the global economy as well, and that's why it's so critical that measures in those packages avoid anything that smacks of protectionism.
Make no mistake. Canada is not a bilingual country. In fact it is less bilingual today than it has ever been.
Having hit a wall, the next logical step is not to bang our heads against it.
As a religion, bilingualism is the god that failed. It has led to no fairness, produced no unity, and cost Canadian taxpayers untold millions.
There is a Canadian culture that is in some ways unique to Canada, but I don't think Canadian culture coincides neatly with borders.
If you want to be a government in a minority Parliament, you have to work with other people.
After all, enforced national bilingualism in this country isn't mere policy. It has attained the status of a religion. It's a dogma which one is supposed to accept without question.
I believe very strongly that in this world you have to have values and you have to stand up for your interests and if you don't do those things you're not going to get anywhere.
We're not going to scrap the budget and make up some totally new platform the day after the election. So it's certainly willingness to compromise but we're not going back on the fundamental things we're running on in this campaign.
The world is now unipolar and contains o-nly o-ne superpower. Canada shares a continent with that superpower.
If Ottawa giveth, then Ottawa can taketh away.
I don't get into that second guessing of myself publicly.
I forget what the relevant American rate is, but I can tell you that our goal is to have a combined federal-provincial corporate tax rate of no more than 25 percent. We're on target to do that by 2012. We will have significantly - by a significant margin the lowest corporate tax rates in the G-7, and that's our - our government's objective.
Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society... It is in fact totalitarianism. I find this is very scary stuff.
I just think it would be unrealistic to suggest we're going to eliminate every last domestic insurgent in Afghanistan. Certainly, the history of the country would indicate that's not a very realistic objective, and I think we have to have realistic objectives.
I think first and foremost everybody should understand that Canadians are strongly committed to the system of universal health insurance, to the principle that your ability to pay does not determine your access to critical medical service.
I've always been clear, I support the traditional definition of marriage.
I think in Atlantic Canada, because of what happened in the decades following Confederation, there is a culture of defeat that we have to overcome.
The job numbers are positive. We've had more jobs created now than were lost during the recession. We're seeing that the creation, we're seeing those numbers not only grow but shift toward the private sector and shift toward full-time employment and these are all signs that the recovery is taking some hold but we're not out of woods.
