Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the hon. member's remarks very much.
I participated in a discussion last evening with his colleague from Calgary Southeast, I believe it was. I may have got the direction incorrect, but it was one of the members from Calgary and of course I cannot use her name. I enjoyed the discussion very much. I was pleased to hear the hon. member echoing the comments she made about the virtues of recall.
I have not noticed anybody's spine twitching on this side of the House, but I think there is something that the hon. member might want to bear in mind in his comments about recall. I know it is one of the things that will be studied in the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs when it becomes seized of the matter once the motion has been passed. He may want to give evidence before the committee on his views on this important issue.
He might bear in mind the fact that in political life popularity of governments goes up and down. When the government goes down the opposition normally goes up but not always. Sometimes it gets fractured among various opposition parties. I need hardly remind the member there are two splinter groups sitting behind him that are no longer parties in the House. However they do have some interest and still some support among the electorate, weak as it may be. Governments, as I say, go up and down. When they go down, the opposition parties go up.
Surely the hon. member must be very suspicious and a little mischievous in proposing a recall of members when he knows that as an opposition member there will be very little call for recall in his case. When I was an opposition member the chances of anybody instituting a recall petition against me were virtually nil unless, as I say, there had been some major problem for which I might have been expelled from the House, like a criminal conviction on a very serious offence. Those are grounds for the House to expel a member. It has happened before. There are precedents for it.
On any other matter my electors are most unlikely as long as I am an opposition member to consider recalling me because I cannot do damage in a riding. It is quite impossible. The government on the other hand makes decisions that can affect ridings across the country. It has to take sometimes-