Mr. Speaker, it concerns me when we are talking about a fundamental issue of democratic rights and freedoms and it is turned into a sort of partisan attack. It is like saying that since a six-year old party did not sweep the country it has no legitimacy. That is not helpful.
The member says that the wishes of the people are taken into account and the fact that a government is elected is sort of a carte blanche for whatever it decides to do because, after all, it got the mandate. Recent history shows that is not the case. The past government was elected and put in place the GST over the violent objections of Canadians. This government recognized it to the point at which it is prepared to withdraw that tax.
The Charlottetown accord was supposedly put forward by the past government with a great mandate. That was rejected by the people. Just because a government is elected does not mean that whatever it does for the next four years somehow has legitimacy. There have to be checks and balances on the decision making process over the next four years. That is what we are saying.
Why would anybody worry about an educational process? Surely that is exactly what we need to do in the country. We need to let people know the issues, to let them know the pros and the cons of the issues so they can make judgments themselves through us as representatives on the issues of the day.
I hope the hon. member is not saying that Canadians are not capable of receiving education and making good decisions. Surely that would be undemocratic. There must be an educational process. That happened again during the Charlottetown referendum debate. In fact the educational process was very disproportionately weighted on one side of the issue, yet people still made a decision based on the evidence they had. We should not be afraid.