I will tell the member why, and I thank him for the question, because the opposition decided that it will not allow committees to travel. Why? Because when the secret ballots happened, after that last illustrious vote, five committees did not elect people to the position of vice-chair from the official opposition.
What do we have? We have the defence critic for the official opposition and another one from the Bloc Quebecois saying that is it, committees are not going to travel and they are going to shut them down. Is that not ridiculous? People should also know that those vice-chair jobs come with an additional emolument of $5,000. I guess their noses are out of joint and their pockets are a little lighter because they did not get elected. However, they are the ones who forced the issue to come to this place. They have the power.
That is another misconception, that somehow opposition members have no influence. I would suggest that if members on that side of the House or this side of the House really believe they have little or no influence around this place, they should go home. They should resign their seats. If members believe that they are ineffective, that they cannot make things happen in this place by working through committees, by working with ministers and colleagues on all sides of the House, then they are doing a disservice to the people who sent them here to make a difference.
Let me provide another point of view. Members say they want to reduce the partisanship. Sure they do. We were elected as Liberals and they were elected as Reformers. They swapped over and became the Canadian Alliance. Perhaps there was another party in the middle, I cannot quite remember. Those folks were elected. There are some newly converted Progressive Conservative members as well.
Everyone is elected by participating in his or her party and by winning a nomination in a riding. Then when a member arrives here, that person is expected to denounce his or her party, to say that member is not going to support the party. I have news for them. If a person on my hockey team intentionally shot the puck in my team's net, I would not want that person on my team any more. It is pretty simple.
Does that mean it is mindless? Au contraire. I have a benchmark with which to compare the caucus system in this place because I served and worked for eight years in the caucus system at Queen's Park. At Queen's Park it does not matter who is in office. The command and control is in the corner of the pink palace, as it is referred to. They let people know what they think people need to know. It is a system that needs some opening up.
I have been very impressed with the caucus system here. We sit in our regional caucuses. In my case in the greater Toronto area on a Tuesday night colleagues get together to debate issues. People would be astounded at how often we disagree with one another. It is a very healthy atmosphere. We receive reports and we hear from other people outside. People come to talk to us at the GTA caucus. Of course there is the rural caucus, the western caucus and the Atlantic caucus. We meet with all of these people.
Then on Wednesday morning we meet, in my case, in the Ontario caucus, which includes the southwest Ontario, northern Ontario, and GTA caucuses, as well as the central and eastern Ontario caucuses. Everyone reports there. Once again we have all the opportunities for discussion. My point, of course, is that we are a team. We get together every Wednesday morning.
Our Prime Minister claims that Wednesday is the most important day of the week and he is absolutely right. If a caucus member wants to make a point, fight an issue, go after something that is important with a ministry, if a caucus member wants to take on a minister, he or she can. Our Prime Minister says not to stand up and make general statements but to name names.
Once we are finished in the Ontario caucus we go across the hall to the national caucus. That is where every member of the Liberal caucus should be on a Wednesday morning unless there is pressing work outside Ottawa and a member cannot be there. Even the senators attend. Lo and behold, it is quite remarkable that we disagree from time to time.
With regard to reform, I would like some kind of confidence that what I say at the microphone in caucus does not appear in the Hill Times literally word for word within a matter of hours. That would be nice. But we are dealing with a large group of men and women and it is pretty difficult. They have their relationships with the media and we get some leaks from time to time. It is a little frustrating. Of course the media and the opposition love to take advantage of that particular situation.
However, this caucus system works. Stand up. Show me what the rules are. That is what I said when I was elected. Show me where the doors are and I will figure it out. I do not need to come in here and whine poor me, I do not have enough power, I do not have enough authority, I need to change the rules around this place. I know what the rules are and I make them work for my constituents. Any member in here who does not do the same thing, in my view respectfully, does not deserve to be here.
Let me talk about another example. Earlier I believe it was the member for Burnaby—Douglas who asked a question of the member for Yukon about whether we should have a debate and a vote on whether or not we should participate in the war in Iraq.
Are we are going to abdicate that kind of decision making authority and responsibility by the government to 301 people, and maybe some of them will not be here, and simply go by the results of that vote? The government and the country would become laughing stocks.
We have been elected to do a job and we will do the job within the rules that exist. If we want to make some changes because some people feel they cannot get in the back door, we can discuss it but why do we have to take up so much valuable time? We should be dealing with issues that are important to all Canadians, issues that matter to them.
I was not going to debate on this particular issue because I found it frustrating. I want to be careful of the wording I use here, but it is something retentive. We tend to look inward at ourselves and ask what can we find that is broken, what can we find that is wrong and go around like nest pokers. That is what we called it in my municipal days. Someone would go around with a long pole and poke nests to see if there were any birds in them. That is what is happening here.
There are a bunch of nest pokers on the other side of the House who are going around and saying, “Let us see if we can poke some trouble out of there”. Why do we not deal with substantive alternatives?
The vote on electing chairs and vice-chairs to committees carried. Fine, it is over and gone. What is really interesting about that is that members should have the experience of running to be caucus chair in a caucus the size of this one. That is done by secret ballot. People will look at someone right in the eye and say they will vote for him or her but we know that they did not, or we do not know because it was by secret ballot. Now we are going to perpetuate that problem all the way down to every committee.
In fact we did have one of our colleagues who was nominated after that vote took place to become vice-chair of a committee. Contrary to the wishes of the consensus from the Liberal side she was nominated by the opposition, except that after the nomination there was a secret ballot and she is now vice-chair of the committee. In essence, with her vote and the opposition vote, they actually defeated the government side. It is brilliant strategy. I wish when I was in opposition I had thought of it but in reality it is just a way to try to upset the apple cart and to turn things on their ear.