Madam Speaker, this is absolutely amazing. The member's own colleagues are denying him the right to have a votable motion. The member spent some time talking about the importance of democracy in political parties and he cannot even get the consent of his colleagues to allow a vote on that motion in the House. It is certainly a symptom of the way the government runs its affairs.
In a general sense I agree with the motion. I would like to read the Reform Party policy on funding of political parties. In the blue book policy which was developed and passed by our members it says: "The Reform Party opposes any assistance to political parties and political lobbies from public funds, including any refund of candidate or party expenses, government advertising during the electoral period, the renting of parliamentary staff for reimbursement, tax credits for contributions to federal political parties and the transfer of tax credits to leadership campaigns, to nomination campaigns or to parties at the provincial or municipal level".
It can be seen that we have a rather comprehensive policy. It stems from the way that we had to build our party.
I heard the hon. member from the Bloc talking about the difficulty of building a new party. We had to build our party from the ground up, from nothing, with not a single cent. I was there almost from the beginning, from late 1987. In fact, one of the people who is now on my executive committee in the riding association was one of the original signatories to the charter of the Reform Party.
We had to raise money by having bake sales, by having garage sales, by walking door to door asking for $10 here and $1 there. It was worth it. It is tremendously fulfilling to be able to build a party that way. If something is not worth working for, it is not worth having.
In that respect I disagree with the member's position that the state should fund parties because it is unfair to people who cannot afford to contribute. If it is not worth working for, it is not worth having.
Even though the Reform Party and even the Bloc started from way behind with tremendous disadvantages, it is tremendously fulfilling to be able to build a party from the ground up.
The hon. member stated that the present system is unfair to people who cannot afford to contribute. No, it is not. People who cannot afford to contribute can work as volunteers and help. Perhaps they can even be fund raisers. I do not think the present system is unfair at all.
Although the hon. member for Gatineau has a formula which he claims would be democratic and fair, when I look at his formula I see that there is a component that would give an equal amount of money to each party but then there is a component that gives some money based on the share of the vote in the previous election. Obviously that is an unfair advantage to the party that is in power. That is not reflected in a democratic way of the support levels at the
time of the next election. That is a major flaw in the approach that has been proposed by the member from Gatineau. All that does is give the government side an advantage so it can spin its propaganda and cover up its lack of interest in the political will of the people between elections.
The government very clearly demonstrates it has no interest in the people's opinions between elections. I do not think it is going to take this member's motion seriously because it is simply not interested in getting the public involved.
It was obvious when members opposite refused to make this motion votable that they were not interested in democracy at all. If they were interested in democracy, they would take notice of people and their opinions on the Young Offenders Act. They have done nothing to make it more effective.
If you ask people anywhere in the country if their streets are safer than they were two years ago when the government was elected, they say no. All the polls indicate that people sense that things are much more dangerous than they were then.
On Indian land claims, the government does not give a darn what B.C. MPs have stated about what is happening in B.C. They simply do not care what the people of B.C. think. We could talk about the employment equity bill and the way that was forced through the House and the lack of democracy in the way the government works.
Frankly, I often tell my constituents that if members came here just once a year for 15 minutes, put all the bills for the year on the table and took one vote, the outcome would be exactly the same. This is a place of parties, rather than-