Mr. Chairman, and honourable members of the House of Commons, it was mentioned many times today about respect for democracy, and you mentioned the attendance. I want to show respect for our member, because it also shows respect for our local member that we had this kind of support in attendance.
I'm on the second round from this afternoon. I mentioned that I was for mandatory voting. When I went to the House of Commons, my first vote as a rookie was to vote on capital punishment. That was my introduction. Then I voted on the ousting of Mr. Clark's government in 1979. We went into opposition for a brief period. He didn't call the House back until about this time in October. We sat for about 33 days, and then, bingo, we had a confidence vote. I voted the government out and had that experience. I voted on the repatriation of the Constitution in 1982, and then I served on the committee for the reform of the Senate in 1983-84. Today, on CPAC, they're talking about reforming the Senate again.
On the question of the referendum, I didn't get a chance to mention this this afternoon in my remarks. I feel that with 338 members of Parliament—and we're talking about basic economics and economies of scale—I don't think we need to have this kind of an approach where we're going to transfer that power and the rights that we give members in the House to go out and have referendums. We have protests today. We have all these issues that are not really accurate. The term is “fair”. We want to be fair, but at the same time we want to be practical.
I think with 338 members of Parliament in the House of Commons, they should be able to come up with the recommendations you're going to bring forward. As the debate goes on in the House we should be able to achieve what we're looking for on this question of electoral reform.
Best wishes for your going home for Thanksgiving. Thanks for coming to New Brunswick, one of the founding provinces of Canada.