There are procedures that will remain in place that the opposition can avail themselves of, and I can assure you—and once again I give you my word—that we will utilize every procedural tactic at our employ and in our abilities to prevent the government from moving forward and trying to achieve their legislative agenda. They will leave us with no choice but to do that. It's not a course of action that I or anyone else on the official opposition side would like to take, but we will be forced into it because we simply cannot allow the democratic will of Parliament to be usurped, if that is the plan of the government. I truly hope it is not.
One thing I again offer up to my colleagues on the government side is to beseech and implore them to consider what the consequences of some of these changes may be, not only for Parliament but for themselves. I did a little research in looking at the results of the last election, and I found that there were 35 Liberal members of Parliament who won their seats by less than 5% of the vote, and in some cases, by less than a per cent. Primarily, they won those 35 seats because—in my opinion, at least—the New Democratic vote imploded.
The “progressive” vote, as it is called, I believe, picked a political pony to back in the last election, and they picked the current Prime Minister. I believe that they took a look at the two opposition parties at the time, the two considered to be progressive parties, and they determined that the Liberals were more progressive on a number of different policy fronts, electoral reform being one, the legalization of marijuana another, and running modest deficits being a third. I believe they thought that the New Democratic Party leader, Mr. Mulcair, was taking too centrist an approach. Being true progressives, they then felt the only way to defeat the Stephen Harper government was to strategically vote Liberal, even though many of them may have been New Democratic voters for all of their adult lives.
It worked. It was a complete surprise to some, and perhaps a bit of a surprise to others, but it was certainly no surprise to learned and experienced political leaders and observers that the Conservative government was defeated; consistent polling over the previous 12 to 24 months had indicated that the Conservative Party could not get beyond the 30% or 32% mark. It was just a matter of which of the two opposition parties was going to be able to coalesce the voters behind them. It turned out that it was the Liberals.
Mr. Trudeau's personal appeal I think obviously played a great part in that, and for that I give him credit, but the reality is that many of the same appeals that the Liberals had in the last election campaign, and much of the personal appeal that Mr. Trudeau had, are starting to wane. It's starting to wear a little thin.
I would suggest to members of the government that if the NDP vote comes back home, if it returns to its normal home, and if they get anything close to their traditional voting patterns and percentages, those 35 Liberal MPs who won by very narrow margins—and there are a couple of them sitting at this table—may be on the outside looking in after the next federal election. This could mean that we would have either a minority government or, if the tables turn dramatically, a majority government, but with the Liberals in opposition. It still could be a minority government with the Liberals in opposition.
As many of my colleagues and I have pointed out before, the wise, strategic parliamentarian would understand how to be careful of what you wish for, because you might just get it. If in fact these changes are enacted and the Liberals came back in 2019 as the opposition, what would they think then? I can guarantee you that if the tables were reversed and the Conservatives were trying to employ these tactics, members of the Liberal Party would be outraged, rightfully so, and would be using anything within their powers to prevent the employment of these tactics.
For some reason, unbeknownst to me, those strategic masterminds in the PMO have determined, for whatever reasons, that this is the course of action they wish to take. This is the road they wish to travel. I hope, and I sincerely mean this, that at some point in time I come to the understanding of the rationale behind all of this, or that someone explains it to me, because it simply doesn't make any sense, except for the theories that Mr. Christopherson has. The more I think about it, the more I think he's probably right: that this is part of the master plan.
But it doesn't need to be this way, you know, and one of the many dangers of what the government appears to be attempting to do is the either intended or unintended consequences of their actions. What I mean by this is that there have been many times in history when changes to the Standing Orders have been enacted in Parliament and either were intended to be temporary or were intended to be an act or a change that really was never to be utilized or employed.
Before I get into the historical references, let me point out something that is currently before us and is an argument that the government forwards: that their proposed change to the Standing Orders requiring a prime minister's question period once a week does not necessarily mean that the Prime Minister will only show up one day a week—he will show up for other days. Well, I guarantee members opposite that once a precedent is set—and history has proven this to be true time and time again—and once a standing order has changed requiring the Prime Minister to show up one day a week for a prime minister's question period, but not referring to any other day of the week, over time that will evolve, so that future prime ministers, and perhaps even this one, will take it upon themselves to only show up on Wednesdays because that is the only requirement in the Standing Orders that speaks to question period and the prime minister. Mark my words, that would happen.
If the Liberals were in opposition, how would they like it if they had access to a Conservative prime minister or a New Democratic Party prime minister on only one day a week? How would they feel if they could question the prime minister of the day on only one day a week? I would suggest to the members opposite that if they want to truly make this something appealing, perhaps they could come up with some sort of standing order that says that the Prime Minister, in addition to appearing one day a week, actually has to answer a direct question and give a direct answer, because we haven't seen that yet.
We've seen on two occasions the Prime Minister show up on Wednesdays and to his credit stand up and answer every question—or at least talk in response to every question. There have been no answers.