Thank you, Mr. Van Kesteren. Again, thank you very much for the compliments you expressed. I appreciate them very much.
On the question of training for parliamentarians, I think of the illustration I have sometimes used. Imagine you are on the operating table and the anesthetist is about to put you out. The surgeon shows up and he's got a big scalpel in his hand. He leans over and says “I haven't done this before. How do you feel?” Nervous, of course.
Think of us, as parliamentarians. When I was a parliamentarian and we first showed up here, we were untrained. We were not familiar with the rules. We didn't understand this institution of parliament and how it works as an institution to hold a check and balance on the government. We ran on public policy and the party policy. We said vote for me and I will implement whatever is in the party policy.
Then after the votes are counted, you find yourself on the opposition side. Whatever you said about implementing party policy is largely irrelevant because it's not going to happen. It's the governing party that says their agenda won and their agenda is to be implemented, subject of course to convincing the other parties it's a reasonably good idea.
The concept of the check and balance of a parliament is never discussed in the elections. Nobody has ever said during an election, “Send me down to Ottawa to be a parliamentarian and I will hold the government accountable.” Nobody has ever said that, but that is the role of parliament. Therefore, we need to have a methodology where we elevate the competence and understanding of parliamentarians as to their real role. Primarily and fundamentally, the parliament, on behalf of the people, is a check and balance on the executive. When parliament is accountable to the people through open and fair elections, with an independent media that keeps them informed, so that they can decide whom they want to represent themselves, then we have a functioning democracy. When ballot boxes are stuffed, when the media is controlled, when parliamentarians are blindly following the leader because he buys their vote with a bucketful of cash, you will not have a democracy. It's game over.
Unfortunately, in far too many countries in the world, that, or something similar, is how democracy is run. It is no democracy. That's why people are poor. They do not have the capacity to pull the chain of the people and say they didn't vote for poverty and government has an obligation to deliver prosperity to them. They can't do it. They can't pull the chain.
I've been to far too many countries and seen far too many rules that prevent the people from holding the parliamentarians and government accountable. That is the problem.