Debates of Feb. 21st, 1994

Supply

[Russell MacLellan, Liberal, Cape Breton—The Sydneys, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I do not feel exactly the way the hon. member does.

Petitions have a very real purpose. They make an impact in the House of Commons on all members of Parliament. We cannot help but hear the petitions read without feeling that the subject matter in the petitions is of concern to the people of Canada. We have to believe that in order to sign a petition.

The fact is that we then reply to them and tell them that we are concerned. The subject matter of two of the areas brought forward in the motion have been dealt with and are being dealt with. The serial killer cards and the Young Offenders Act are getting a great deal of consideration and work in the Department of Justice.

As I mentioned regarding the recall of members of Parliament, the Prime Minister has said this is not something we feel is justified. All three points have been considered or are being considered.

I am not saying we should not change the way we handle petitions. All I am saying is the method put forward in the motion is not the way to go. If there are other suggestions, certainly they should be considered. I do not think we should be rigid and unbending in the way we deal with the business of the House.

[Margaret Bridgman, Reform, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak in favour of the motion. The motion itself is basically an administrative one as it requires a change to the standing orders to allow petitions to be debated in the House.

One member suggested that petitions could be presented to the House for debate through a private member's bill. We are suggesting that is one mechanism but we would like to see petitions also have a mechanism or vehicle of their own and not be dependent on a member presenting them as a private bill.

As we know, petitions arrive and are either tabled or verbally presented to the House in a statement and then tabled for a recording procedure. From there they go to a ministry to be answered within a set period of time.

This brings a couple of general points to mind for reasons for putting petitions on the table for debate. Petitions can be seen as a symptom of a weakness or a problem in existing legislation or petition topics in many cases can involve the mandates of more than one ministry. These two points would provide good reason to debate the subject matter of petitions.

Petition topics in many cases address specific or single issues. These issues tend to be an end result or an outcome of a policy or law. It is a cause and effect kind of thing. The end result can be seen as a problem to the Canadians bringing it to our attention but it is not necessarily the main problem or the underlying cause. It is an outcome suggesting there is a weakness in the process or in the law itself. It can be seen as a symptom or a warning of a problem somewhere within the policy or the law. This concept, cause and effect, raises a few options to examine also. One could be that there is a deficiency in some aspect of the content of the legislation; another could be there is an actual omission to the content; still another could be that possibly a different set of circumstances in some areas of our country are causing different outcomes from the policy or law that are not necessarily occurring in other areas. Of course there could be a combination of the various options already mentioned.

Considering all the possible options available to us if we do address petitions as a symptom of an underlying problem, it seems a logical step that we would present this subject matter to the House for debate in order to identify the cause and the possible solutions to resolving these associated problems.

We could treat the symptom and not worry about the cause of it, but it would eventually return either as a larger or a more serious problem or both. At some point we would have to do a full investigation and identify the cause and correct it.

The second point offering rationale for debating of petition subject matter is that of the possible involvement of more than one ministry's mandate. This is important possibly for several reasons, but the one that comes to mind first is the advancements in our knowledge base which may shed new or a different light on a policy or law than when it was originally debated.

This new information may involve mandates of ministries not previously involved in the original decision making process or possibly not involved to the degree necessary at the time. The classic example of this today would the Department of the Environment. Its present day role in the outcome or effect of

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many decisions made in the past by other ministries is quite obvious.

I submit that health care is in a similar position today. The end result or effect of many policies or laws in the past today are producing health hazards or concerns to some degree that are basically unacceptable to today's standards. The concerns about health may not be the main thrust or objective of the petition but the health care issues are usually involved to some degree, be it direct or indirect.

For example, any petition regarding the use of pesticides on crops or antibiotic drugs or other drugs used in livestock, could be sent perhaps to the ministry of agriculture but it definitely has a health care concern and that should be addressed as well.

Another example would be a factory dumping contaminated waste into a nearby lake or stream. This could be sent to either the Ministry of Industry or the Ministry of the Environment for a response. Yet again, there are great health concerns and issues apparent in this that may not have been addressed at the time of the original debate.

Also sentencing for assault has an indirect impact on health. If the sentence is reduced and that happens to be the complaint of the petition, then possibly it is because the assault rate has increased, more people are getting injured and consequently requiring treatment.

Most petitions today have some bearing on health issues. These issues need to be addressed and resolved in such a manner so that we can continue to promote a healthy environment for us to live and grow in.

Identifying and resolving health care problems found in the subject matter brought to our attention by petitions is essential if we want to help reduce our health care costs and promote good health through a wellness approach versus an illness approach. We must proact and not react to health care issue concerns regardless of how they are being brought to our attention. Petitions can be an excellent resource, especially if one views them from a feedback point of view.

Specific issues raised in petitions may be described as isolated situations, exceptions to the rule or extremely small percentages of the whole and may not be seen as being very significant in relation to the overall effects of the law or policy. However, there are still signs and symptoms of a bigger problem if we do not do something about it. It is like a cancer. It starts out small and insignificant but slowly grows to consume the whole. At some point along the way it must be treated and the sooner it is treated the better chance we have to save the whole.

In closing, I remind us all that petitions are calling cards. They are calling us to re-examine the various past decisions and all the ramifications of them both direct and indirect in a more in-depth approach than maybe previously or in light of new information that has come up over the years.

To provide for the review or revision and updating of the various laws and policies the opportunity to debate the subject matter of petitions in the House should be available.

[John Bryden, Liberal, Hamilton—Wentworth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will thank the hon. member for Surrey North. Those were very well thought out remarks which I enjoyed very much.

I wonder if the member could help me with one aspect of this which has been touched upon by other speakers but it touches me very deeply, I have to say. She was saying that the whole thrust of this motion is for petitions to be debated.

I will give the member an example. We are talking about debating and bringing to a vote a petition, for example, on the subject matter involving prohibiting the importation, distribution, sale and manufacture of serial killer cards. My difficulty is that when one debates a motion like that and it is brought to a vote I am afraid that one may be setting the agenda of this Parliament on an important issue that is much broader than just simply saying yes or no, we agree that killer cards should be prohibited.

The issue of prohibiting something like killer cards is a freedom of speech issue. It is a very large issue. It involves wider areas. My fear is that if we do as this motion suggests will we not be setting the agenda for legislation that will require a much vaster debate?

[Margaret Bridgman, Reform, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question.

I think what the member is saying is possibly what I was suggesting in my remarks. The actual topic of a petition could be seen as an outcome of a process or some such law of policy. To debate that specific topic would be a narrow point of view because it is a symptom or a sign of something major that is happening within the whole process.

I am saying that should come back to this House and we should look at this whole process and find the cause somewhere within this process that is generating that kind of result.

I would think that it would require some of our time for an extensive debate.

[Maurice Godin, Bloc, Châteauguay, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her comments. I would like to make some very brief remarks on an example just given of a petition to recall members. I find this extremely dangerous. I agree with the hon. member opposite who just said that it would be possible for a

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party to put pressure on a member who did not agree on a certain subject and force him to resign. That is the first point.

The second point, also extremely important, would be to limit a member's foresight. In this House, around 1990, we saw five or six Conservative members leave that party to sit as independents; later, they formed the Bloc Quebecois. If the members had had to be recalled by law, I think that we would have simply prevented those people from exercising their foresight, because it was not just five or six members who saw that things were no longer working; in the last election, all of Canada voted that way and eliminated the Conservatives from this House.

For these two reasons I think that it would be rather dangerous to put that position into law.

[English]

[Margaret Bridgman, Reform, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am not exactly sure what the question was. The member is addressing recall and the concerns that we as parliamentarians may have, seeing that as being a threat over our heads.

My response to that is I do not think we should feel limited or restricted in our actions. Possibly what we should do is take a more positive approach versus the negative and put more faith in our constituents and Canadians in assessing our position here in the House and realizing that there are times when we cannot please all the people all the time on everything. We have to have faith in the people to judge and evaluate our performance honestly.

[Diane Ablonczy, Reform, Calgary North, AB]

Mr. Speaker, this is a very interesting debate today which is near and dear to the hearts of Reformers.

During the election campaign just a few months ago the candidates' forums that I attended were very interesting. The Liberal candidate, a very fine individual, had a line in her speech that went over very well with the crowd until I got at it. It was: "In a few days time you people will be the boss. For those three or four minutes when you are in the ballot booth you are going to be the ones who decide what happens for this country for the next four years". That is true.

My response to that was Canadians in a democracy should be in charge a whole lot more than three or four minutes every four or five years.

This debate is important because it goes to a very fundamental, philosophical definition of democracy. It is, do what the people think and want count between elections? I would submit, and I think it is borne out by what happens in our country that right now it does not count for very much. We have heard a number of members argue vehemently that it should not either. To me that is fundamentally wrong.

I believe that many Canadians would like to sit where we sit, would like to have the time and the opportunity to examine the issues before our country and to make decisions based on that evidence. However, not all of us as Canadians can do that, given the time and constraints of our other duties and responsibilities and perhaps other factors. Therefore, on the democratic principle of one person, one vote we elect our own representatives.

We should underline the word representative. In the past representation has been a minuscule element in what happens here in Parliament. In the past it was not what the people we represented thought that counted so much as what the party we represented thought. If that had worked well we would all be happy with it. It really has not worked well.

When we get down to a style of representation that is dependent on what the party thinks, then it is the people who decide for the party who decide for parliamentarians and decide for the whole country. We get to the point at which a very small group of people decides everything because what it decides is supported by the other people in its party who dominate Parliament which decides things for the country.

That is really the problem we are trying to fix. If this small group of people had consistently made wise decisions, respecting our opinions, that carried the judgment of Canadians I think we would all be happy with that system. All of us have a life. We would be happy to live our lives, to pay attention to our business or professional interests or family interests and let this wise small group of people run everything, if it was doing it well. It has not.

The fact of the matter is that this group has buried us in debt. It has not listened to what we want. It has not respected our viewpoints. This has been shown over and over again in the last Parliament in which we had members of Parliament standing up and actually saying bare faced to people in public meetings: "I do not care if 90 per cent of my constituents oppose this legislation, I am supporting it because it is right for Canada".

With respect to some of our representatives in the past, it is our money that is being spent as Canadians, it is our future that is being shaped by these people who seem to know so much better than we do what is right for our country. I do not feel in a democracy it is appropriate or even acceptable for a small group of people to say it knows best for everybody.

What wisdom is invested in people simply by walking into these hallowed halls? We do not know any more than most Canadians in spite of our breadth of background and the education that most of us have. We are simply here to do a job and that job has three elements. It has an element of a mandate because we campaigned on certain things. If we campaigned to balance a budget then we had better balance the budget. If we campaigned

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to listen to people and be open to people's viewpoints, then we had better follow through on that. If we campaigned on anything, then people expect us to keep those promises and they have given us a mandate to do that.

There are many things that come up in Parliament about which we have not specifically stood up in a campaign in those 50 days and said we are going to do this in this circumstance. Then we have to follow our own judgment in some cases because we cannot go back to our thousands of constituents and take a poll asking what they want us to do.

There are numerous occasions when the person elected has to use their best judgment. In that I agree with members opposite. There are also a large number of instances in which the issues are so big and so far reaching in consequence and so national in scope that it is only right and proper in a democracy that every citizen, after having an opportunity to make a full and fair examination of that issue, should be able to have input in it.

Otherwise we get into a situation we had in the Meech Lake debates and the Charlottetown accord in which a few people in this House think they know best for the country. It turns out that their wisdom, the wisdom of every single party in the House, is totally disconnected from what Canadians really want.

It is up to us as people who have been given a great deal of trust to fix that situation. In my view the way to do it is through these democratic reforms that we have been talking about. Other democracies use them. They work well. They connect what we do in this House as decision makers with the judgment of ordinary Canadians.

We have ample opportunity to use our wonderful and exalted judgment on any number of issues. We need checks and balances on that discretion, on that judgment, and that is all we are asking.

We have picked the issue of petitions to talk about today. Thousands and thousands of Canadians spend untold time, effort and trouble because they believe so strongly that something should be done and they appeal to us in a petition to do something. What happens? Things drop into the black hole. They are not debated. They are not voted on. They are rarely looked at. Many times people do not even know they were introduced because they were not introduced when the House was full. That is wrong. Canadians need to be able to feel that what they say to us counts for something. Nowhere is it more evident than in the petition making process.

This is only one aspect of where we as parliamentarians must start recognizing that we only represent people. We must be connected and accountable to those people whom we represent. We must truly respond to their wishes, desires and concerns.

I would submit to the House for the consideration of members that these changes are coming. I would ask that they be supported and that we work together to reconnect Canadians with the decision making process on their behalf.

[Karen Kraft Sloan, Liberal, York—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, once again members across the floor in the Reform Party have set up yet another false straw dog concerning the Canadian people.

It has been suggested that Parliament is not a democratic place. I support what the member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell originally said. There exists a mechanism to deal with petitions. It is up to individual members who bring these petitions forward to ensure they do the work for their constituents and on behalf of their constituents. As the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell pointed out, where are the Reform Party members in terms of their motions regarding petitions?

I sit on this side of the House. As a brand new member I am learning a lot about the traditions of Parliament. The very first day I sat over here on orientation day was most significant. I listened to the previous speaker talk about the fine tradition of Parliament which has existed and developed over hundreds of years.

When we take a tradition like Parliament and decide to throw it on its head, upside down, we cannot control the kinds of things that might happen and the injustices to the democratic process that occur out of naivety. It is not without passion on the hon. members' part on the other side of the House, but I would suggest this is yet again a false straw dog set before the Canadian people. There exists in Parliament a mechanism to do the very things they are suggesting on the other side of the House. If they were serving their constituents well they would be doing just that.

[Diane Ablonczy, Reform, Calgary North, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member opposite for her comments. With respect, however, it is an insult to Canadians to suggest that their thousands of signatures are a false straw dog. They should count for something.

Yes, members can introduce private members' bills based on petitions, but what happens to them? They go into a lottery. Quite often they are not even debated or voted on.

Yes, we can work for these things in committee. But should not petitions signed by thousands of Canadians have more significance and not just go into the mill? Should they not be treated with some sort of acknowledgement and respect by the people they are presented to?

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If we go to someone with a request we expect a response. We expect them to say whether they agree or whether they will to support us. The petitions come to us as members of the House. They deserve more than just to be tucked away and perhaps to be the basis of a private member's bill or maybe raised in committee some day.

These kinds of initiatives on the part of the citizens deserve a better response. That is what I am saying. I think Canadians would agree with that. Otherwise why would they bother wasting their time with them?

[Brenda Chamberlain, Liberal, Guelph—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am concerned. The hon. member for Calgary North said that we do not do what people think and want during elections and asked whether what they think and what they want count. I take great exception to that. I was elected to do exactly that. Most Liberals were elected this time around because we offered a balanced perspective.

The Reform Party, as popular as it may seem to be in the western part of Canada, has not taken a great surge in the rest of Canada. As we know it is not a true party of Canada. It truly is a regional party.

[Ted White, Reform, North Vancouver, BC]

Wait until the next election.

[Brenda Chamberlain, Liberal, Guelph—Wellington, ON]

We will see. The people have spoken very loudly and clearly on our platform. It is important for members of the Reform Party to recognize that those are the wishes of the people.

The hon. member for Calgary Southwest the other day spoke on this same point. I really feel we are elected to learn and to seek out information to which perhaps people at large do not have access. When the Reform leader spoke he said that they would educate them, that they could institute an educational process. I worry about that. I worry about an educational process that a certain party would institute to educate Canada in referendums.

I really feel strongly. The question I want to put to the member is: Does she not feel comfortable in making decisions with the information she gets from her constituents by phone, by meeting with them in public meetings, or by any of the ways that are available? Is she is not comfortable with that information-

[The Deputy Speaker]

Order, please. I think the question is clear.

[Diane Ablonczy, Reform, Calgary North, AB]

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.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Order, please. Time is up.

[Roger Simmons, Liberal, Burin—St. George's, NL]

Mr. Speaker, in another life I used to be a superintendent of education. I remember well-and I will document it chapter and verse-the town was Springdale on the northeast coast of Newfoundland and the issue was whether to amalgamate the school services.

As members will realize, under the Constitution, Newfoundland has a denominational system of education. At the moment in 1994 it has in effect three systems: a Roman Catholic system, a Pentecostal system and an integrated system, that being the integration of several of the religious denominations which formerly had their separate services. I am talking now about a point in time just before that integration. We had in a given community a number of individual school systems.

The proposal was that they be integrated, so somebody had a petition. On the petition in that community of 3,000, fully 85 per cent of the petitioners-I do not have the numbers but it represented the overwhelming adult population of that particular community-wanted what we called amalgamation, a bringing together of the separate services, an integration. However, within two weeks somebody else produced a petition with the overwhelming adult population having signed it in which about 58 per cent did not want the amalgamation. Clearly many of the

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same names showed up on both petitions within a period of 10 or 12 days.

My point is that petitions serve a very worthwhile purpose but they can be abused. One of the reasons they can be abused is that it is difficult when a neighbour comes to the door to say no to him when all he is looking for is a signature.

Members of the House will acknowledge that very often petitions get signed without due thought. They ought not to be taken as gospel. They ought to be taken as an indicator though. If someone comes to me with a petition on a subject that states 85 per cent of the community is of this particular mind, I take that to be a very strong message.

Do members know what is even better than petitions? A ballot box because there they cannot vote both ways. There they vote one way or the other and they are obliged to stick with it.

Let us understand where I am coming from on petitions. Petitions are a very important instrument, a very important mechanism. That is why we as legislators or parliamentarians have always given petitions-and by we I mean the many people who have gone before us in this Parliament and the British Parliament-petitions a place of pre-eminence in the Chamber.

It is the grievance of the people. It is the people saying collectively that they are for something or they are against something or are concerned about a particular issue. Members of Parliament who make light of that instrument are making light of a lot of people. They are making light of an instrument that has served Parliament and the people of the country very well for a long time.

Having said that, the danger is that we make the illogical transition from petitions as a means of sending a signal, petitions as a means of recording a grievance, to government by petition.

I believe I illustrated the problem with government by petition with my example. Had we followed both petitions back then in the community of Springdale several years ago we would have had two schools. We would have had the amalgamated one because that is what 85 per cent of the people wanted. We also would have had all the separate schools because that is what 58 per cent of the people wanted within the same 10 or 12 day period.

That is the difficulty.

That is the conundrum with petitions. Very often they would have you do things which are mutually exclusive. I put it to any member of this House that if they go out and get a petition on any issue, in the same week I will get a petition with as many names on the other side of that issue. The beauty of petitions is that they send a signal. The weakness of petitions is that they send mixed signals.

The weakness is what happens at that door, as I mentioned a moment ago. It is difficult unless you have a very well thought out position on an issue. If you are publicly known to be, for example, against abortion it is easy to say to the individual who comes to the door: "You know my position on that and I cannot sign your petition which is for abortion". However, with the exception of three or four conscience issues such as abortion, capital punishment and euthanasia, people have to live together in small communities and when a neighbour comes to the door with that petition, often it is easier. I am not saying it is right. I am not justifying it. I am characterizing what happens thousands of times with petitions. Thousands of times people sign a petition and are known in many cases to have signed petitions on opposite sides of the issue.

That is why I started with an example, not a generalization, a specific example in which I was involved in a situation in which people within eight or ten or twelve days had signed opposite sides of two mutually exclusive petitions.

That is why it is dangerous. It is ill advised to make the jump from petitions as a form of grievance, petitions as a way of testing the water, petitions as a way of knowing what people think on an issue, to government by petitions.

Let us look at the essence of this particular motion. It says in effect that petitions are an important vehicle. It says in effect that petitions ought to have more of a role in this Chamber.

I say to my friend from Edmonton Southwest, if that is his real motivation here, and I would suspect that it is, there are ways to do that. His colleague from Calgary North dismisses the idea of private members' bills. A lot of private members bills go down the drain, a lot because they should. However, a lot of others have gone down the drain because the member did not do his or her homework. Very often if a member is seized with an issue, seized with the importance of an issue, that member can stick handle his or her way through the maze here and get a private members' bill passed in this House. I have seen it happen many times.

Before people start denigrating the private members' bill, they ought to check the record in this House and they will find that many private members' bills have made it past the post in this particular Chamber.

[Douglas Young, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

We cannot smoke here because of a private members' bill.

[Roger Simmons, Liberal, Burin—St. George's, NL]

The old anti-smoking stance on the Hill right now, my colleague, the Minister of Transport, reminds us is the direct result of a private members' bill, just by way of example. There are many others we could mention.

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If petitions bring to the public eye an issue which is sufficiently important and if the petitioners have a sufficiently energetic and informed member of Parliament, that issue will find its way to the floor of this House in a way that will be productive. That is my first point.

I have already stated my second point a couple of times. Let us not rush to have government by mail. If we think this through, there is no need to come here at all. We just need little buttons in 27 million homes-if you are for this, push that button; if you are against that, push that button. That is not what government is about. That is not what this House is about. This is a forum for debate. I have had members of all parties say to me since they have come here in one form or another that they did not quite realize how it was, the implications of this.

I have had to say to myself and to others many times that is why I am here. I have not come here with a closed mind. I have not been sent here as a proxy by the people of Burin-St. George's. Twenty-five thousand people put their x after my name last fall, October 25. Many of them had done it on occasions before. They have had nine occasions to cast their votes for or against me, as the case may be. There is a method of recall. If that is the concern, then I have difficulty.

I have written down what the member for Calgary North said: "Representation has been a minuscule element here". I have to say to her that she might want to look at those words because she might have said them in the heat of debate.

What an insult.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear.

[Roger Simmons, Liberal, Burin—St. George's, NL]

What was I doing when I was out beating my gums for the last aeons of years about the fishery problems on the south coast of Newfoundland? What was that?

How about the times I got up here and talked about the need for better student aid programs? How about the times I got up here and talked about some fairness, some balance in the way that we have transfer payments to the various provinces? How about the time I got up here and asked for tougher laws in terms of gun control?

Was I just pushing my own agenda at those times? Was I maybe representing somebody once in a while? Or, in her words, was it just a minuscule number of times-I was doing it by accident, I came here to push my own agenda. I do not think she believes that for a moment. I do not know her well but what I know of her tells me that she does not believe that kind of nonsense. That is absolute, unadulterated nonsense, I have to say to her.

She might want to retract it because if she does not retract it she has insulted not just me. I have had a few insults. I can take them. There are a few other members of Parliament around here. Even if we exclude all the members of her party who have just come here, let us go back and put them in a special category that they would not dare to do anything but represent. Let us buy that line for the moment. It is the same for my friends in the Bloc who, with the exception of six or seven of them, are here for the first time. It is the same for a number on this side and those who would like to be on this side, those over in the Siberian section over there. We plan to have those numbers for a long time to come.

A lot of us have been here before and a lot of members of other parties have come here. I just had the feeling, perhaps I was completely duped by all this, when I watched them when they got up and presented petitions and raised issues that they were actually representing people. Now I have to accept that all the time they were here they were just flogging their own words, just doing their own thing.

I do not want to make light of the member's comment because she also used an example that I wanted to use so I will use it as well. She used the example of the GST in the last Parliament. There was a clear case in which despite the petitions, the objections of 85 per cent of the Canadian people, the government rammed it through. There is a case in which the system broke down. It broke down temporarily. People dealt with it in spades when the election came. The party that did that has only two members in this House right now.

The system broke down temporarily but it is basically the exception. I can give another example. Around 1983 the government of then Prime Minister Trudeau was contemplating some changes in old age pensions. Then petitions came in. Then the will of the people was heard. We very quickly abandoned any plans we had on old age pension reform at that particular time.

We cannot have an election every day. Is four years not enough? Let us make it three years. If the time between elections is the issue, if we cannot be trusted to come down here for four years at a time, let us haul us back as they do in Congress in the United States every two years or whatever. Let us change the time period.

Let us not dupe the people into thinking that all will be happy and hunky dory if they can mail in their decision on today's problem, push the button today, send in the petition tomorrow morning.

The problem, as I illustrated in my opening example, with petitions and with the will of the people is that it is not always black and white. Sometimes 30 per cent want one thing and 35 per cent want another and the other 35 want something else. What do we do, have three policies?

We cannot beg the essential question that a government is elected to govern. If it does it in accordance with its mandate it can face the people squarely next time around. If it betrays that

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mandate, we have a very recent example of what happens to that kind of a government.

There is a notion that somehow we can undermine the electorate all the time. I mentioned 25,000 voted for me, others can quote even more impressive figures. My friend from North York could tell us, I suppose, that over 100,000 people voted for him. Were all those people a bunch of dupes? Were they all absolutely stupid? Every member sitting in this House had either a majority or a plurality. They came here with the direct blessings of many thousands of people in each case.

Now I am being told today that these people did not mean that. What they would rather do instead of all those x s is have a lot of petitions. God bless them. Send us the petitions, lots of them. Send us all the petitions they want. If some of the people in Burin-St. George's are signing those petitions I have to say to them, each one of those 25,000 darlings who voted for me, that I will respect their petition, I will hear their grievance but I will not let it cancel out my basic mandate here which is to represent all the people of Burin-St. George's, not just the people who can hustle petitions best. That is my mandate here. That is a mandate I intend to serve to the very best of my ability.

[Jack Ramsay, Reform, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly do not have to ask the hon. member any questions because I know where he stands. That is pretty well for the status quo.

I would like to make a couple of comments that he might want to respond to. He took exception to our member from Calgary when she indicated that she felt the representation has been minuscule. The member's former leader, Mr. Trudeau, made the statement that when backbenchers get 50 feet from the House of Commons they are nobodies.

Perhaps he could take that into consideration and perhaps he could take into consideration what the people think about that kind of representation where a small group of people within a party and within a government decides the direction that the government is going to take on important issues that impact upon individuals so severely.

I have had people say that those who oppose these populace principles of referendum, recall, citizens' initiative, the reform of the Senate, a triple-E senate, are afraid of their own people. They do not trust them. They are saying to them at election time: "Trust us with the authority you will invest in us by way of sending us to Ottawa, but we do not want to have to trust you to hold us accountable for the way that we conduct your affairs on a daily basis".

The hon. member mentioned this whole huge mistake that the former government made with regard to the GST. Look at the damage that was done and has been done and will continue to be done. We are saying that if we had a mechanism in place through which the people could have stopped that damage, that ill-conceived piece of legislation would not have been passed into legislation; and the enormous economic damage that has been done and that has been recognized by the Liberal government would not have been done. This is what we are saying. The people need these checks and balances. This is to what the member for Calgary was alluding.

We are not saying we want to run government by push buttons, as the hon. member stated. We want to place reasonable checks and balances in place whereby when the people are aroused over an issue they have some means of stopping ill-conceived legislation from coming forward that will have such a detrimental impact on their lives and the lives of their children.

[Roger Simmons, Liberal, Burin—St. George's, NL]

I would like to thank the hon. member for Crowfoot. He mentions the status quo. No, I am not very big on the status quo, not very big on change either. If something is worth changing, let us change it. Let us not change it for the sake of changing it.

The hon. member might be surprised to hear this, but I liked most of what he said. I thought his example of Mr. Trudeau was a bit outdated, but that is beside the point. But at the end, the member for Crowfoot particularly talks about checks and balances.

In 1992 in 52 weeks I travelled 49 times from Ottawa to Burin-St. George's. Two weekends ago I was absent from this Chamber on Friday and Monday and between Friday and Monday I flew to Newfoundland and back, which means eight hours on the plane, four hours each way. I spent 26 hours in a car, and I attended 29 meetings of fishermen's committees, town councils, et cetera.

I say to my good friend from Crowfoot there is the check and balance he is looking for. If the member stays in touch with his constituents he cannot really come back here and ignore the advice he has heard. I have to say to you, sir, as faithfully as I can that I reflect the wishes of my constituents here.

[Ted White, Reform, North Vancouver, BC]

Mr. Speaker, our motion seems to have been a burr under the saddle of the members opposite today.

The hon. member decries a government by petition, as if we had proposed government by petition. Debating the occasional major petition is hardly government by petition. It is certainly sad the members opposite are afraid of reforms that would show Canadians we really care about their opinions between elections.

Would the hon. member consider a petition with one million signatures on it worth debating. I am asking the hon. member the same question I asked earlier of another member: Why is he afraid to debate a major petition? Is he afraid that in front of the television cameras his constituents will see that he does not actually represent them?

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[Roger Simmons, Liberal, Burin—St. George's, NL]

The member for North Vancouver, as is the case most of the time, is in a fairly feisty mood. But in the process he should not attribute motives about people who are scared. The degree of scare or fear is not measured by the side of the aisle on which you sit. I sat on that side of the aisle a fair number of years as well.

Actually I will check it out because that is the one my good friend from Kindersley-Lloydminster has as a matter of fact. His question gets lost in the rhetoric which implies that all the people over here somehow are bad guys and bad girls because they sit over here and they are all scared of everything.

No is the answer to his question. Bring in the petition with the million signatures and I will be glad to debate it any day at all. The issue I was talking about was a bit more than that. I was getting concerned because if I am hearing too much on this issue, the member for North Vancouver can correct me. I am hearing that if we had all the petitions debated here and we had referendums on what to put on our toast every morning, the world would be hunky dory. Everything would be happy, happy.

I say to him and to other members of the House that until we change the system, the government is elected to govern. When it governs badly, as the last one did, it reaps its reward during elections.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, let me be brief.

The question has come up whether a petition with a million signatures on it should be debated in the House. Maybe we should consider something like that. What if a petition came before the House with a million signatures saying that official bilingualism should be discontinued in Canada.

I believe there are questions the government could deal with without having to debate them. It is a matter of policy. Possibly the member could comment on this issue. If a petition comes forward for debate, if we follow what the Reform Party is suggesting, how would other members get prepared to debate that petition without themselves going back and somehow doing some sort of work to determine the position of their constituents? It is totally impractical. Maybe the member for Burin-St. George's could comment.