Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate Minister Miltenberger bringing this forward for some type of public discussion and I certainly welcome it. At the same time, this would be the same Minister telling me in the back hallway right after that exchange that he was thinking about calling a point of order just to calm me down. Now that’s a conversation we had; hence, his point and, hence, his point of order here today.
Mr. Speaker, the issue of volume and tone, I think, is quite exaggerated. I think one is not identifying the passion and concerns about seeing issues ignored, repeatedly brought to the table and I think that’s confusing. It’s normal in any parliamentary process to have discourse amongst sides. The fact is if decorum is changed and elevated to an ever-so-slight level that is recognizable of whisper, whisper there, whisper back here, people think we aren’t doing our jobs and Cabinet, in my experience, thinks we’re picking on them.
I’m sorry, Mr. Speaker, I don’t disagree with the fact that… It’s almost saying you can’t raise your concerns, elevate your concerns with your passion. I’m here to do my job and demand results, Mr. Speaker, and sometimes that does cause one to raise the energy in the debate.
Quite frankly, I cannot sit here and ignore the lack of results and Cabinet sit over there and expect that we don’t call them out when they don’t do their job. They find that offensive and rude, and I certainly welcome another point of order if they want to keep calling it on those types of things. It’s very frustrating on this side of the House. I have every right to say to the Minister, in my view, that if he doesn’t do his job, and I look right at him again and say, if you don’t want to do your job, you can come over here. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your guidance on that. What I’m trying to say is I have every right to call the Ministers out for not doing their job. The public demands it and I’m sorry if it hurts the feelings of Cabinet, but I stand by the fact that this passion must be brought to the job and sometimes it raises
the tone and elevates the volume of the job. If they all want to stand up in successive order and say they don’t like it, I’m sorry; they’re going to have to live with it in some capacity. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.