Mr. Speaker, I am a little reluctant to take part in the debate today because this matter of recall is being studied as we speak by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs which I have the honour to chair.
In spite of that, I have views on the subject which I will be making known in the committee I suspect on Thursday when the committee discusses this matter. I wanted to state those views for the record today since there was an opportunity to debate this bill which is very important. I acknowledge that it is an important one.
I know when the hon. member for Fraser Valley West was speaking he referred to the fact that there had been a conference in Lethbridge and there was considerable opinion at that conference that recall was a good thing. I had the honour to attend that conference. I must say that the workshop that I attended did have a straw vote and supported the notion of recall but it was not one that I supported at the time. I expressed my views on the matter at the conference.
I invite members of the House in reflecting on whether the bill should be adopted by the House or not to consider two or three points. The first one of great importance is the fact that this institution, the House of Commons of Canada, has one of the highest rates of turnover of any similar legislative body in the western world.
The average in electoral turnover for this House certainly since the war and for a longer period-I do not have the figures here for the longer period-has been at least a third of the House on average that has changed hands in every election. I am sure that number has increased as a result of the very significant turnover in the election in October last year when two-thirds of the members of the House were replaced. That kind of rate of turnover is one that is frankly intimidating to anyone seeking to enter a career in politics because it indicates that the nature of the position is so transient that members once elected can hardly be allowed to stay on for any reasonable period of time. Most members obviously serve less than two terms. They usually only serve one.
That rate of turnover in my view not only renders the House somewhat less effective than it might otherwise be because it lacks a stable number of members who have experience and are able to transmit that experience to others so that the House functions better as a legislature which is the case in some other legislatures in the world, but it also makes it more difficult for parties to operate as national organs of the state and major
players in the political process because they are unable to depend on having a reasonable number of members in the House of Commons.
One can only look today at the Progressive Conservative Party which, while some members opposite may wish that it were not a national party, still is in some sense a national party. However, it has no representation effectively in this House. Of course I would not want to detract from the abilities of the two members who are here but the fact is that it is lacking national representation in this House.
Bear in mind that we have in Canada a Parliament with a massive rate of turnover. I turn to other foreign legislatures like the House of Commons and ask is there a power of recall in any of them? The answer is no, there is not.
I invite the hon. member for Beaver River to tell me of another national legislature, not a state one and not some municipality, that has recall. I do not know of any. I do not think there is a single one.
Why should Canada be a leader in this field and change its electoral process when nobody else thinks this is smart? Everyone else thinks it is not a good idea and I suspect that Canadians probably on reflection ought to think very long and hard before they make this kind of change.
The third factor I think is important is the length of the term to which members are elected to this House. It is a maximum term of five years. In the scheme of things that is not very long. Human civilization has been around for a few thousand years. Parliaments have been elected in the United Kingdom for something over 900 years. Five years in the scheme of things is not a long term and most terms are less than that. Five is the maximum and very few parliaments run to the maximum term.
We know that Mr. Mulroney ran to a full term because he was afraid of a trouncing that he deservedly got at the polls. But most governments can approach elections with a little more confidence than old Mr. Mulroney could do. Of course he was so nervous he got out and got a successor who was less competent than he was in terms of electoral success. The fact that she is not here and that he is not here bear testimony to the fact that their success rate was poor.
Again, we do not have lengthy terms in Canada. Most members of the House serve for a four year term and sometimes it is less than that. In minority parliaments it is frequently less than that.
Again, why should we have recall added as an extra burden to members of Parliament? Imagine the situation. I invite the hon. member for Beaver River to consider this. In fact the hon. member for Edmonton North in a brilliant Standing Order 31 yesterday pointed out that since the election in October last year the polls in the province of Alberta indicated that the Liberals have moved from 25 per cent in the actual vote to 52 per cent of the electorate in Alberta. She should be quaking in her boots with news like that because if her bill was law now everybody would be running around her riding signing up people to get her out. I do not think that is reasonable.
I like the hon. member for Beaver River. I would feel badly if she were not here. The fact is she has been elected for a term and I am delighted that she is here to serve her term. I look forward to the next election. Maybe one or both of us will not be here to serve in the House after that. Why should she be put in the position of having to run to Beaver River and work in her riding day and night to get petitions signed to stop people from getting her out on a recall? I do not think that is a reasonable expenditure of time on her part. I would rather see her here having her ideas exposed in the House so the voters of Beaver River and the voters of Canada can understand Reform policy. The longer she is here, frankly the better it is for us.
I think she knows that. She would not want to face recall. Maybe that is why it is being proposed. I do not know. But that is being mischievous.
The other argument that I think is important in this is that the notion of recall is founded on the idea that members of Parliament are delegates for their communities. In other words the member of Parliament is not to think an independent thought ever. The member of Parliament is to voice the concerns of the majority of his or her community only and never think an original thought.
I do not agree that that is the case. I think many members of the public vote for a member of Parliament not because they think the person is a great delegate or will do exactly as they say. They choose a member of Parliament because they expect the MP to exercise some judgment on issues that cannot be foretold at an election but are not expected to come up and expect the MP to exercise his or her best judgment and make a decision that is in the interests not just of their own community, which of course is important, but in the interests of Canada as a whole.
I realize that with two opposition parties that are very regionalized in their approach this is a tough argument to make in this House, but it is a very important argument because members of Parliament are elected to represent not just their own communities but to represent all of Canada.
Each one of us assumes some national responsibility. We exemplify it in our travels across this country when we speak to Canadians in every part of our land.
I am proud as an MP for Kingston and the Islands to go to British Columbia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island or Beaver River and speak to electors in those areas and learn about their concerns and appreciate them so that when I exercise my judgment in voting for government estimates and for bills in this House I can give some expression to what I think is in the national interest.
It may not always be fully in accord with everything my constituents tell me but it normally is something that is in the best interests of Canadians as a whole.
Hon. members laugh but I tell them we have had more members on this side of the House vote different ways on issues than we have had from that party. Every vote in this House has been unanimous as far as the Reform Party is concerned and it is the party of the free vote.
Is that really free? I do not want to get into free votes but I am telling hon. members that if they listen to the concerns of other Canadians, if they go around the country as I have done and as I know some of them do, they will hear about these concerns. They will realize that if they are going to express the national will sometimes they are going to have to change their views.
We see these views changing now. We see the views of the Reform Party change from day to day and week to week. Frankly some of us are delighted to see that.