My House leader says “Maybe”, so there you are. As a House leader, he certainly knows things that I wouldn't, in terms of tricks up his sleeve, but the fact remains that we do respect those to whom Canadians have given enough seats to form a government. We get all of that, but the opposition has rights, and many times the rights of the opposition are actually the rights of Canadians, because when the party in power has all the power, it controls the House, the Senate, and all the major appointments.
It has all the power in the world—except this is a democracy, and not just any old democracy. It is one of the best, if not the best damned, democracies in the world. We're looked at as a model of democracy. There are other countries that would give anything to have the rights that our Parliament has. They already have the other side, the accumulated power in one place.
I've been to Africa many times as a vice-chair of the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Association. I've been to many countries where you know power is concentrated; it's very clear where it is, and it's all inclusive. What they are missing is an effective check and balance, a loyal opposition that has the ability to hold the power to account, not to deny them their legitimate right to that power but to hold them to account as to how they're exercising it and what the implications of exercising that power are.
Here we are. This is not the transportation committee talking about a subclause 7 of a bill that basically is not that controversial but over which they have gotten themselves into a bit of a twist. This is huge in terms of the substantive arguments at stake. What is at stake is the process we use to make laws.
I'm sure there are bigger things, but they just don't come to my mind right away. This has got to be in the top three—the process by which the Canadian Parliament passes laws and the checks and balances on a majority government. Remember, there are presidents of the United States who have said they would give anything to have the power a majority government Prime Minister in Canada has in terms of the unilateral power under the way our system has evolved.
By the way, we've already evolved a long way from the kind of democracy that we originally were. Mr. Reid will know this better than I, being an historian, but here in my home province of Ontario back in the day, in the 1800s—again, Mr. Reid can provide much more than I can, and I apologize, sir, if I get some of this wrong—if you were elected as a member of Parliament and you were invited to join the executive council to be a cabinet minister, you actually had to go into a byelection, go back to your constituents, and get permission from them to sit with the government.
Why? Because Parliament was all-powerful. As it is now under our structure on a flow chart, Parliament is all-powerful. If you leave Parliament—where the power is—as you're representing your constituents and you join the government, you've removed yourself, and you're playing a very different role. Back in the day, you actually had to go back to your constituents in the riding and have a vote, whereby they agreed that you could continue to be their member and, yes, assume a position on the executive council. How far have we come from that?
We've come to the point where that kind of power that individual members have...and I'm sitting here looking at six members who are saying absolutely nothing as democracy is steamrollered, and they think that's just fine. Somehow they think, within the confines and the safety and comfort of this room, that they're going to walk out that door and maintain that kind of comfort.
Good luck. Seriously, good luck. I'll be watching with bated breath to see how these scrums go as you answer to Canadians through the media to why you couldn't wait two days to get vital information on changing the way we make laws, since not one member.... My challenge still remains. It's on the floor. It's in front of you. I challenge any member over there to take up what my House leader has said and tell us what are the dire implications of not dealing with this today. What part of the sky falls in between Tuesday and Thursday if we don't pass this motion?
They're not even looking up, Mr. Chair, let alone taking the floor and giving me an answer.