Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his remarks. It is nice to have him as a colleague again in the House of Commons, this time as a fellow member of Parliament.
He has asked me to address the issue of how I feel about Elections Canada. Before I answer the question I might just answer how I felt about some of the remarks that were being hurled across the House. I suppose I was partly amused but also partly saddened by the consistent comments of the member for Vancouver South. He kept saying loudly across the House as I was speaking the other night: "I will lose my riding as well. It is not just Beaver River that is going to be dismantled". The member for Vancouver South was saying that his riding would also be dismantled.
That is all well and fine, but we need to draw the distinction in the House that it could be one reason the government is trying to ram the bill through so quickly, because he stands to lose his seat. I am in the position of standing to lose my constituency as well. In other words I will not have a place to run in the next election if I choose to run again.
That is why I think it is more important for someone in this party who stands to lose a constituency not to be so self-serving as to say: "Yes, let us put the whole process off". Then I would be serving my own interests and saying: "Whew, I am safe. I can carry on". There is a real discrepancy when someone from the other side was hollering: "I will lose my seat". It would be perfectly natural then for him to support his government on railroading the bill through Parliament and putting the whole process on hold. There is a real difference of opinion there. As a
matter of principle I am against it even though I stand to lose as well through this process.
My dealings with Elections Canada have always been very good. I have run in two general federal elections as well as one byelection in the spring of 1989. Even though I was treated as somebody who was almost literally a kook in western Canada because I represented a new political party that nobody had ever heard about and nobody knew anything about it, I must say the people at Elections Canada were most fair with me in the general election of 1988 and in the byelection of 1989 when we surprised Elections Canada and the whole country of Canada from sea to sea when I took 50 per cent of the vote.
Since then obviously my party has gained a great deal of strength and steam across the country. When I ran as only one of 200 and some candidates in the general election of 1993 we had undergone the process which is very general and very basic. People were appointed as returning officers in their constituencies. We underwent that in Beaver River because the previous returning officer had retired. We were subject to a new returning officer, Mr. Lorne Assheton-Smith from St. Paul. Those are political appointments, as we all know. I will send this comment in Hansard to Mr. Lorne Assheton-Smith, the returning officer from Elections Canada in Beaver River, indicating that he treated me fairly as a candidate and I have absolutely no criticism whatsoever of Elections Canada.
The criticism I would have is not of the whole situation. Maybe it is political to an extent with the Electoral Boundaries Commission, but the question on everybody's lips is: if they think they are replacing Tory hacks with something better, heaven help government members who are ramrodding the legislation through. They will do so at their own peril if they replace them with hacks of another political party who they think might serve their interests better. I think all of us would be ashamed to see that happen.