I understand that. We would not have met two of the three criteria.
At the time, it was considering whether it would run candidates across the country. In 1993, it did make that decision. It had one member of Parliament elected in a by-election under its banner, but had Deborah Grey not successfully contested that by-election four years in advance of the general election in which I ran, the party would have had a problem.
This is something that appears to follow a pattern I have seen here since I was a staffer in the 1990s, and in those days, as Reformers, we used to say, “Liberal, Tory, same old story”. It is the efforts of the incumbent parties to try to freeze out their competitors, new parties that were competing against them.
We've all faced challenges from new parties. The NDP came out of the CCF, but the CCF was an insurgent party that came in. For the Reform Party, subsequently the Canadian Alliance under whose banner I was elected, it is a similar story, and for the Bloc Québécois, a similar story.
I note that under the criteria laid out here, although the Bloc Québécois can participate in leaders debates forever and ever as long as they elect one member of Parliament, they could not have contested and had a candidate in the 1993 leaders debates—where they became the official opposition—because of the fact that they had nobody elected under the party banner in the previous election.
There was a by-election. One member, Gilles Duceppe, had been elected as an independent and, therefore, not under the party's banner, so even though they had someone who had successfully run for them, they still wouldn't have qualified because they didn't meet the criterion of the number of seats and they did not have somebody who had been elected in the previous election. They would not have had two of the three criteria, yet they became the official opposition, and in that election, they got 13.5% of the vote. Now they're down to 4.6% of the vote, while Ms. May is down to 3.7% of the vote, but they're in for eternity in leaders debates.
This is clearly very problematic indeed and deserves the review of the committee whose recommendations were not taken, although there was a pro forma effort at making it look as though they had been taken by the government. The government's actions in this regard are disappointing, and quite frankly, self-serving. It's perhaps not unexpected.
Anyway, on that basis, there is a strong argument to do so. I note that Mr. Christopherson, in his motion, says we would report back in a timely report to Parliament. I heartily agree with that. In my view, our report to the House of Commons should happen before Christmas. That's a reasonable thing. The evidence is now in front of us and we can move quickly. That allows us to do so in a manner that does not in any way prevent a commission that meets more accurately with the recommendations made by this committee. Of course, my party didn't concur, but Mr. Christopherson did concur in those recommendations, and his party did. That just seems at least more consensual than what was done with this particular order in council.
I'll stop there and thank you for your generosity in accommodating this debate when we had scheduled something else.
Thank you.