Mr. Speaker, I will try to find a germ of relevance in my representation as well.
I have listened with a great deal of interest to this debate today. We are talking about closure, redistribution and political interference or non-political interference in the political process in Canada. That is one of the things that we can treasure.
When we look at other countries in the world and reflect on the tragedy that happened in Mexico yesterday, we think of the very real and very great political discourse that goes on in the country. We see our colleagues from the Bloc who are here and while we are at completely different poles we are able to discuss these things rationally and without fear of personal harm. That is something we really need to treasure in our country and to hold very dear. I guess that is one of the reasons that I wanted to speak to this motion.
When this bill was first introduced I really did not feel all that strongly about it. My riding of Edmonton Southwest is affected very little. We lose a little bit to the northwest but as members would know, Edmonton Northwest is represented by my colleague who shares the same last name. So we do not win or lose on that one. In the south we lose a little bit and we gain a little bit so that the effect on our constituency is not all that much.
What we do have is a sense of fairness that when we get into a political debate or into an election here in Canada most of us do not have to go to bed at night thinking that there has been any gerrymandering going on with our electoral boundaries. This is something that I think is particularly important.
In the last election I was running as a rookie. The people from Elections Canada who were looking after things were all appointed by the Conservative government that preceded this government. I must compliment all of the people that I was associated with at Elections Canada. They were impartial and fair to everyone. In particular, I would use this occasion to compliment our returning officer, Patricia Collins, who went out of her way to be fair to me.
When we as a political institution start to change the rules that are established, whether we like them or not, we are treading on fairly thin ice. That is the reason that I am standing to speak against this motion today. If we do not like the rules then we have the privilege of changing them any time we want. However, there is no reason to suggest that the electoral boundary change cannot go forward as it would normally have done.
I am not in favour of changing the number of seats in the House. It could have been frozen at substantially less years ago. However the very people who are now making the case for freezing the number of seats, during the Charlottetown accord when the number of seats in this House were going to grow amazingly, not one word was raised against it. Different times make different priorities.
When I thought I wanted to speak to this and the new wrinkle of closure was added to the soup that an earlier colleague described, I thought why not phone the Library of Parliament and ask them to send over a few topic headings under the term "closure" and then I would glean from that a few examples of members' opposite when they were in opposition railing against the government of the day on the issue of closure.
There are three pages. So we just grabbed one to use as an example. Then I thought I had better be a little careful because I am sure that when members opposite were railing against closure when they were in opposition they had no idea that these words would be coming back at them in such a short time.
However, I must use one example and this is from Hansard , May 29, 1991, the hon. member representing Ottawa-Vanier:
Since I began my remarks on the government's heavy-handed motion to reinstate certain bills, for which it could not receive unanimous consent because they are indeed not very good bills, a new element has been introduced into the debate-closure. It is now using its majority, the tyranny of the majority, to impose upon the rest of us its will.
That is far from being democratic.
Therefore, I am a little nervous about introducing this because I know that if we are as successful as we hope to be, we will be sitting on the other side of the House.