Mr. Speaker, it is unusual to find champions of property rights who are active in politics.
A lot of people reacted to the Reform Party with surprise and with a sense that we did not belong in federal politics. There is a real sense in which they were right, though not for the reason that they believed. We are not typical politicians. It is that we really do not like big government. That is why we are here. We think we have to be here. It is not just because we want to be.
I have been trying to understand why Canadians are in such a bad mood these days and why government seems to be at the centre of all their complaints. I believe it is because of the issue before us today.
The right to own property means the right to live unmolested by government. I listened very carefully to the arguments of the member from Windsor, but the objections are those that are typical of the Liberal Party that believes in more big government. I listened carefully to the argument the Bloc presented, that this was a provincial matter.
Who will protect the people of Canada from more big federal government? Will it be the provinces? I think there is a real contradiction in what Bloc members are saying about their own policies and their own beliefs. In a democracy government is not them; it is us. It is not the government molesting us. It is one another through government.
We have decided we can vote ourselves free money and we can. The more we try to beat wealth out of one another and tolerance and all other virtues, the more angry we get not just with government but with one another. Democracy is the practice of voting for public authorities. That is a way of keeping government under control, not a way of legitimizing any action it may take.
The right to own and use private property means the right to live unmolested by government. It really is not the government taking our hard earned tax dollars, our property; it is all of us molesting and taking property from each other through government.
Government is not benevolent. Government is force. The more wealth we try to get from each other through government, the more angry we get not just with government but with each other. We have trouble seeing what the lack of property rights has caused us and society. Too many of us believe that democracy gives the government the ultimate authority to take away our fundamental rights and our property. However this is just using democracy as an excuse. What we have in Canada is not a true democracy. We vote every four or five years to elect another bunch of tax and spend specialists who disregard our fundamental right to own and use our own property.
That is not what democracy is. Democracy is supposed to be a way of keeping government under control, not a way of legitimizing the confiscation of private property without due process of law and without fair and timely compensation. Voting should be a way of preventing government from taking our property. Instead we have become addicted to using it as a tool to take one another's wealth. That is socialism.
This is what I think is wrong with Canada and no amount of voting can fix it. For example, if private property rights were in our Constitution, the justice minister could not implement his gun control laws and we would all be better off. Unless we hold a referendum to include the right of private property in the Constitution we have little hope of getting true democracy in Canada. We need true democracy in our country and we need it desperately.
We in the House need to amend the Constitution or hold a referendum on the subject of putting the right to own property into the Constitution.
The member for Skeena has asked me to read a statement into the record in support of the motion. The principle and policy is our blue book policy and that would therefore include all
Reform MPs. Hopefully the government will consider carefully what we have presented in our reasoned argument.