Mr. Speaker, I want to advise you that I will be splitting my time.

Mr. Speaker, I say goodbye to this place wanting to thank everyone who makes our life better, everyone from yourself, to the table officers, to the people who make us feel safe, the security personnel around Parliament Hill, to the pages, to the folks upstairs who feed us, and to the folks who clean our offices. Everyone here has made my life better over the last nine years and has allowed me to do my job.

Now to the business of politics and why I am standing to speak to this bill. I had a speech, but it is too long; there is not enough time. However, I credit the Canadian people with seeing past all of the accusations that are being made with respect to this bill. As a government, we have accomplished a lot with the economy, a lot with social justice issues, which is what we are talking about here today.

We heard the other side say that it is a political stunt. This whole place is full of politicians and that is what we do.

In 2011, we had an election. In that election this party promised this piece of legislation, but we also promised other pieces of legislation. There comes a time when we have to put our money where our mouth is and we have to set priorities, something the third party's leader had trouble doing. We hear the opposition talking about all of the negativity. Canadians voted for a strong, majority Conservative government because of things like this bill, because Canadians were promised this legislation and that life would mean life. We heard the members across the way say that it does not meet the constitutional challenge. When we brought in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we opened a Pandora's box of challenges to the Constitution. Before that occurred, we had very few challenges to our Constitution. Now we have all of these challenges. Every Canadian knows that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been challenged from day one, from the beginning of it. Therefore, that is a rather spurious argument to say that it has to be charter-proof. There is no such thing in this country as charter-proof. There will always be someone who will challenge it.

We are delivering what we said we would deliver. We said we would bring in this piece of legislation, and we have. The opposition may by cynical in saying that it is in the dying days of the session. We are earning our keep here. We are doing the business of this country. We are doing things that we promised to do. That is why I leave this place a very proud member of Parliament, a very proud Conservative member of Parliament, because we have lived up to the things we have promised. I know my confreres leave this place knowing that what they said they would do they will do, and that will come true on October 19 also.

Rick Norlock

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