Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise to address Bill C-69.
Bill C-69 really has not received much news coverage. On the face of it, it is a technical piece of legislation completely lacking in sex appeal.
At its essence, it can be an important bill for a couple of reasons. First, it points beyond itself to the desperate need to bring about some reform of the Canadian parliamentary system. It points to some of the flaws that we have in our system today. It should be scrutinized, regarded and debated in the context of overall reform of the Canadian parliamentary system.
The bill will find opposition among three different groups of people. It will find opposition among people who believe in real representation by population. It will find opposition among people who feel that we are already over-governed to a great degree. It will find opposition among people who disapprove of the idea of granting power to unelected and unaccountable bodies like a boundaries commission.
First, let me talk about representation by population in the context of the reform of the whole parliamentary system. Reformers believe in the idea of absolute representation by population. In other words, to the greatest degree possible constituencies should have the same population.
However, as a counterpoise to that, to balance the idea of constituencies which perhaps would congregate in heavily populated areas, we have to have a triple-E Senate. It should have an equal number of senators from each province; it should be an elected Senate and it should be an effective Senate. It is something that our party has been fighting for since its inception in 1987.
We are proud of the fact that we are the only party that has ever elected a senator. The late Stan Waters was elected in the Senate election of 1991 in Alberta and was subsequently appointed to the other place. That could have been a very valuable way to start the trend toward a triple-E Senate.
That system would probably give some regions, such as Alberta and Saskatchewan, as my hon. friend from The Battlefords-Meadow Lake has just talked about, and other regions of the country some representation and protection from the tyranny of the majority that we have found when we have a pure representation by population system in a country that is as geographically large as Canada.
Reformers believe in the idea of representation by population because it underscores a commitment to the idea of equality before the law. It is a very important concept which, to some degree, has been forgotten in the past several years. It has been superseded by a different type of equality which governments have come to believe in, that is, the equality of outcome. All Canadians want is equality of opportunity, and they would find that, to a large degree, in a system that had absolute representation by population, along with a triple-E Senate. It is is a very pragmatic concept, a concept familiar to countries which have large geographical areas, such as the United States and Australia.
It is a pragmatic idea because it prevents countries which are big and sparsely populated in some areas from falling apart. In a country as large as Canada, we have very disparate points of view and divergent interests. Sometimes, certainly under a pure representation by population system, those ideas that we find in different areas of the country would not be adequately addressed in a House of Commons, for instance. We need a counterpoise to that and that is why Reformers are big supporters of a triple-E Senate.
Bill C-69 gives us neither of those concepts; certainly not representation by population and definitely not any kind of change that would give us a triple-E Senate. In fact, it offends the principles that underlie both of them.
One of the things that Reformers find hard to deal with is the 25 per cent variance regulation in Bill C-69. It means that constituencies can vary in size by 25 per cent from the mean. That could lead to discrepancies of as much as 67 per cent in population size between constituencies. That is a huge difference in population size. It permanently dispels the idea that we can have equal influence for our votes in a Canadian system.
That may be a quaint notion to a lot of people in this place, but I would argue that people back home very firmly believe in the idea that each vote should carry the same weight. We would argue strongly that the government has to begin to move that way. That is why the Reform Party has suggested, at least, to amend the variance to 15 per cent between constituencies. If we did that, it would mean that, at most, we would have a variance of 35 per cent in populations between constituencies. That is not perfect, but it certainly brings us closer to the idea of representation by population until such time as we can have constitutional reform that can address some of the real problems that affect the Canadian parliamentary system.
As I mentioned a minute ago, I think people feel we are already over governed. I remind members of an article in that ubiquitous journal that sits on just about everybody's night stand, Readers Digest . About a year ago there was an article about how much money is spent on governing Canadians, how much it costs to run Parliament. When I think of that article I cannot help but think of our unelected Senate and the people over there who sadly do not enjoy the confidence of Canadians, and how at times they have not displayed the type of conduct we would like to see from all parliamentarians. I specifically think of the GST debate.
It is necessary to make those people accountable. If we had a triple-E senate it is entirely possible that we could trim the size. Reform has called at various times for Senate reform that could possibly leave us with six senators from each province. Some people have suggested we only need two from each province. We look to the American example and we can see they can get by with two senators from states as large as California, which has a population almost as large as Canada's. Somehow they manage to make that system work. One thing that could be done is trim the number of senators.
A lot of people would agree with me if I said there are a lot of backbenchers in the House we probably could do without because there is not always enough meaningful work to go around. I mean no disrespect to any particular backbencher. However, in a private moment if they were true to their heart of hearts, many backbenchers would acknowledge we could probably get by with fewer members of Parliament and still do the essential work required to make the government run.
The article mentioned it costs somewhere in the order of $770 million to run Parliament. If we could get the number of members of Parliament to about 265, as Reform suggested, it would still leave constituencies of a size allowing members to deal with the concerns.
If we could get the size of the Senate down, make it effective, elected and equal, it would have the confidence of the people and could serve a necessary purpose and perhaps go a long way to healing some of the wounds that divide the country.
Concerning boundary commissions being given a lot of power to make changes, I am concerned about that and Canadians should be concerned about it as well. It is conceivable that power could reside simply in the statues for the government to administer.
The boundary commissions people are unelected and unaccountable. They have the power to set boundaries. I would not suggest they have this in mind but if they wished they could do a tremendous amount of mischief with the boundaries. It has been suggested by other members that has happened in the past, that boundaries were drawn somewhat arbitrarily because of political and other reasons that really do not have anything to do with the proper function and the proper way representatives and their areas should be chosen. That bothers me.
We need to move away from that to the greatest degree possible and enshrine in statutes more precisely how rules should work so there would be less latitude for unelected, unaccountable bodies to change the boundaries to suit either their own needs or perhaps the needs of their political masters.
In Bill C-69 we see the tremendous latitude boundaries commissions have to make exceptions to the 25 per cent variance rule by allowing them to exempt certain constituencies. In the past this has applied to very large constituencies. There is nothing in the rules preventing boundary commissions from making exemptions for constituencies that are not as large.
Reform would like to propose bigger changes which would require a different forum and a different debate. In the context of this bill we would like to see a rule that would put a limit on the minimum size of a constituency that could be exempted on the schedule. We are suggesting somewhere in the range of 200,000 or 250,000 kilometres. We are concerned that as long as it is left open, we will see MPs from various areas of the country coming forward, lobbying to have their boundaries exempted, not for any good reason, but because they want to keep their boundaries for very political reasons.
I point to the reason we are here discussing Bill C-69. There was a very unseemly scene not too long ago when the boundaries came out under the current bill. MPs from the government and the Bloc were running to the government saying: "Please do not change my boundaries. It will ruin my chances for re-election". It stopped a situation in which we already had a process underway to draw new boundaries.
Reform constituencies were very much affected by this. The member for Beaver River, the deputy leader of the Reform Party, was to lose her riding altogether. Nevertheless, Reform did not squawk about this. Members across the way and in the Bloc squawked, made a big deal about this, made sure their own interests were protected at the expense of Canadian taxpayers and at the expense of slowing the entire process down, forcing it back into the House under new legislation, tying up members' time to deal with this once again. That is entirely inappropriate.
The government has made a grave error. It has gone to great lengths to protect its own interests as it has done with other issues like MP pensions. For once it would be nice to see the government put the interests of its constituents and of the people of Canada ahead of its own interests. That is all Canadians want.
That whole unseemly situation gave birth to Bill C-69. It is why we are here today. What Canadians really want ultimately is a complete change to the underpinnings of the Canadian system. They want representation by population. They also want a triple-E Senate which would go a long way to giving the regions representation and in healing some of the wounds as a result of a faulty system today.
A fair and transparent democratic set of institutions is all Canadians want. The government and Bill C-69 have failed to give them that. For that reason I will not be supporting this legislation.