Some days, and some days I would have been the problem, so fair is fair.
All right, new stuff.
One of the government members, Michelle Rempel, there's a story here with a headline:, “Public hearings 'a big delaying tactic'.”
Notwithstanding the fact that we are using parliamentary procedure to try to affect bad parliamentary procedure, it's not delaying for delaying's sake. It's not an obstructionist move. If it was, I would say so. Why not? That doesn't change. I still have the floor. Nothing would change. I would be upfront and open about it, which is what I prefer. I'm sure we're all that way. But it's not. It's not just about trying to be obstructionist, because that only gets you so far as a political party if you're hoping to get good media. I mean, they are not foolish.
With the media, especially those who have been around politics and politicians for any length of time, it doesn't take too long before they start rolling their eyes and saying, “Oh, they're just grandstanding, hoping to get a headline. There's nothing really here.” That's not the case at all. We are very serious about this, which is why we have committed the time and the effort that we have so far to try to convince the government of the error of their ways. To continue to have government members take shots at what we're doing is not helpful to the government, in my view. It's really not, because those who agree with you are already there, and those who aren't sure are watching. There are impressions being developed, and Canadians may or may not agree that what's going on here is in their best interest.
If I might, Chair, I would like to also make some reference to another set of hearings that was held by the House of Commons. It was the Special Joint Committee on the Constitution of Canada. I definitely won't go too far in talking about the process, because I have made the statement, and others have too, that this is one of the most important pieces of legislation we have. We say that about a lot of things, but really, when you're talking about the fundamental process by which Canadians are given or denied the right to vote, the procedures for the actual voting, money in particular is huge. Some of those concerns that the government has made point to a bill that money talks. That's the opposite. I thought one of the best things that was ever done for democracy in Canada, and I give full marks to former prime minister Chrétien, who brought in exactly what the government undid, but the public financing was one of the best improvements to democracy that we could have.
For instance, I was in Morocco not that long ago doing an election observation. They don't have a lot of elections, and those that they do have don't necessarily meet all the standards one would hope they would meet, but you know what? One of the first things they guaranteed was that there was public financing for all the parties so that money didn't skew the field. Morocco: a monarchy has a better sense of democracy then we do. It's going to take so long to bring that back, and it's a shame. It was an easy one for the Conservatives to go after, and no one should be at all surprised that the party of money took funding for political parties out of our regime and left it to just the money. Yet the emerging democracies of the world are the ones that are making sure it's in there right from the get-go, because they get it. If it isn't a fair playing field, if it's not fair for everybody, then it's not a fair election. That which we have undone, emerging democracies that are nowhere near the level of evolution that we have—and we're far from perfect or finished—get that point that they don't want money buying or skewing their election.
Does money guarantee you win the free election? No, but it's nice to have. If you give me a choice as to whether I have 300 signs out in a neighbourhood, or 500 signs, I'd rather have 500 signs. If I have 500 people who want to put them on their lawns, now I need the money to buy the signs. That's a lot easier if you have friends with money, and you have rules that allow you to hire people through the back door and link that with stifling the Chief Electoral Officer, skewing a few other things, lack of consultation; you put it all together and there is so very little democratic about any of this, that it's an outrage.
I was starting to make reference to the process that the special committee on the Constitution used. They held hearings. Again, the Constitution: pretty important; election laws: pretty important. So you'd think there might be some similarity in how Parliament would approach these two subjects. But it turns out that it's not really Parliament per se. It's the government of the day. If we were in a minority government situation, we would be back where we were before doing the work of the Chief Electoral Officer and starting from there. This would be such a different world.
If anybody dared suggest when we were having those discussions that a government is going to come along and unilaterally impose their will of an election law, every single member of that committee would have said, “Are you crazy? That's never going to happen. Who would dare do that? How could that be?” Yet here we are. Here we are, living, breathing in Canada, and the bill before us didn't have any input. If the government had their way, there wouldn't be any after it was tabled. We saw that by virtue of their ramming it through the House. They said they want to do committee work here. The first thing the opposition does is put forward a very straightforward motion, offers also to move off of that position to find a negotiated compromise that the government can live with and that we can live with, and it's still, no, no, no, no.
They don't want to meet around the clock. Every time I mention we might meet around the clock to do the bill if we get towards the end and run out of time, it's, “Are you crazy? We're not going to work around the clock.” Yet, if it's necessary to go around the clock to shut down the official opposition, they say, “That's just regular business. That's okay. But we're not going to do that kind of work, work, work. We're only going to do that if we have to, to get one of you guys,” because we're mucking up their idea of how laws should be made in Canada.