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.