I applaud you for your efforts to change the tone in the House. I think I need to remind you that you are in the first year of an electoral cycle and you are a brand new MP.
There have been changes attempted since the 1970s—or 1960s, if I go back that far—in the procedures of the House in order to try to alter in some way the political behaviour of MPs in the House. They always break down in the end. There was a concerted effort by the Paul Martin government, in fact, to do away with confidence votes except on certain items, and he took other measures as well to try to change the tone in the House. There were similar kinds of attempts—the bells crisis, I can think back to, in the Joe Clark and Pierre Trudeau days, and so on.
This is not something new. This has been around for decades and decades. I would think it's not just simply a matter that we can do better if only we have the will to do it. I'm sure that will be a factor, but unlike you, I believe that there is such a thing as institutional incentives to behaviour, and that institutions do ultimately shape behaviour. They don't determine it, but they shape it.
Minor reform to procedures in the House is not what's needed here. We need bigger change, and one of those bigger changes is electoral system reform. Unlike my colleague here, I actually think it will be easier to bring about than Senate reform, which was the alternative. He thought we should concentrate on Senate reform, but I think electoral system reform is actually within your power to change in a serious way. I'm not sure Senate reform is. We'll see how the current changes work out.
Based on many studies over a long period of time and a lot of experience that older parliamentarians could bring to this discussion too, we know it is always easier to get along in the early part of a new electoral cycle. As you go along the electoral cycle, things change fairly dramatically. I hope it doesn't happen, but I think it probably will.