Mr. Speaker, we are here once again debating the merits of political interference in the rights and privileges of the Canadian citizen.
It has always been that bad politicians make the assumption that the electorate cannot make decisions for itself and so they get involved in its everyday life and in its rights and privileges and make changes on its behalf. I thought that we were through with this and that this new Liberal government would make some changes in that regard.
There is a saying that if we forget the past we are condemned to repeat it. That saying goes particularly well in this House of Commons. If this government forgets what happened with the last government it is condemned to go the same road in the next election. Let us look at how we got to this point in the history of electoral reform.
In 1964 the present system came into effect so that the Canadian citizen would always have the right of representation based on a specific formula. Is that logical?-yes. In 1974 the federal government amended that formula and with it the rules for the Canada Elections Act.
Unfortunately that formula would have resulted in an increase in the number of MPs to about 369 by the year 2001. We all know that more MPs are less desired than fewer MPs. Then we move on to 1986 when politicians of the day decided to simplify the formula. So important was this concept that the government of the time enshrined this right in our Constitution.
Let us briefly cover the basics of that right. The first basic right is the Representation Act in 1986 which retained the idea that certain provinces would be guaranteed certain levels of representation. This affects provinces with slow or declining population growth, like P.E.I. and Quebec, more than others.
The second basic right is after every election, to preserve one of the founding principles of our nation, representation by population, the system is re-examined and constituencies are readjusted according to the rules set out in the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act.
Like all rules, they must be interpreted before they can be applied and this is where the government comes in. As we have seen in the past, when the government gets involved things tend to get a little muddied. It is amazing to me the similarities between this Liberal government and the Conservative government in this regard. Actually, it is becoming quite clear.
There are many similarities in many regards. For instance, their spending habits thus far indicate that both governments are more intent on leading us into bankruptcy than out of bankruptcy. However, let us look at a similarity between the dying Conservative Party and the Liberal Party.