Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to follow my thoughtful colleague, the member for Guelph-Wellington, and to take part in the debate on the proposition of the member for Kindersley-Lloydminster, with whom I have had the pleasure of serving in committee. He is a thoughtful member and he usually brings forward in committee very helpful and reasoned propositions.
He did not acknowledge the source of his motion. Openness goes back to Mr. Gorbachev and glasnost, which he thought was a precondition of perestroika, the open debate. Behind that was also the larger global concept of novie mishlenie, the new thinking, which says that you can offer hope for constitutional or other propositions for change, but unless you have some unifying philosophical principles, some sort of larger vision of the sort of constitutional society you want to establish, you are not likely to take these things very far. That was one interesting thing in the constitutional revolution on Russia with perestroika, that there was a larger vision.
It is interesting to note that in looking for foreign models they looked extensively at France, Germany, the United States and other countries but did not borrow from Canada. The largest contributions were made through borrowing of German institutions, which then the supreme court based essentially on American constitutions but updated to post-war conditions.
What I think is rather sad in terms of our constitutional development in Canada in the last 30 years has been the
pre-emptiveness of the Quebec presence to the exclusion of debate on larger constitutional ideas. If we look back to the golden period of the quiet revolution, in a certain sense its main ideas were achieved very early, by the 1970s, in the languages laws, Mr. Bourassa's on the provincial side and the federal official language law on the federal side. In essence a large social economic revolution was achieved under the guise of a language reform, with very profound consequences.
Beyond that the constitutional ideas seem to lapse into the pursuit of constitutional particularity. If you do not have a larger pluralistic conception of a constitutional development, those ideas are not likely to go very far. Through successive failures they have not managed to go very far.
One problem therefore is the absence of motor ideas. I find the same problem with the Reform Party approach to constitutional change, even though there are some reputable right wing think tanks in the country and there has been a considerable amount of debate in some of these institutions.
One basic flaw in the Reform approach is the failure to analyse the contradictions in the proposals and to produce some sort of operational synthesis. The notion of establishing the independence of members of Parliament, of loosening the party ranks, and of encouraging free votes goes a certain way. When you link it to the concept of consultation and a notion that the results of the consultation are to be binding on members, you are riding horses running in different directions.
This is not tabula rasa. It occurs in terms of constitutional development in the history of many countries. In that cradle of so many of the contemporary liberal democratic ideas, the French revolution and the post-revolutionary settlement, you do find the antonyms-government by assembly, highlighted by the convention, where everything was debated at great length and where the convention made all the decisions, and the plebiscitarian idea, which is ultimately consummated by Napoleon and others, of submitting it to the people and getting a legitimate nation by direct popular vote and the legislative chambers become mere ratifying organs.
In this debate on questions of openness some of the contradictions have needed to be resolved, and that has not been done. I think that is a pity.
There has been a failure also to realize the complexities of governmental decision making today and the constitutional law making processes. The hon. member for Beaver River, for whom I have a very great respect, asked a question today that was very critical of the judiciary and the judiciary's role in law making. The essence of law making today is the recognition that there are many roads to Rome in terms of making laws, that there are many players, and no one of these has an exclusive role. They are in a very real sense complementary. There are some aspects of social policy making that are ripe for judicial law making, because judicial law making, in essence, is empirically based and problem oriented. It is a step by step process that proceeds in the particular fact context of particular cases, solves a particular problem in that specific context, and then moves on to the next case. After several of those decisions you begin to get what is called jurisprudence constante, an evolution of principles on an empirical basis.
Some other matters clearly are ripe for full popular consultation. I think one of the things that is very clear today is that no substantive constitutional change can be achieved in the future in Canada without submission to the constituent processes, without submission to popular vote. I think this is the irrevocable lesson of Charlottetown. However, it would be a mistake to believe that every aspect of social policy and every fine piece of legislation should go that way. There is a parliamentary role.
I think it would have been helpful in terms of the opposition motion today, of the second opposition party, to have had some recognition of the manifold nature of the law making process. There are some aspects that are ripe for judicial action, some for legislative action in the pure sense, and still others that might be left to popular consultation. Perhaps there should be some offering of criteria for deciding which of these fronts to move on.
In general I felt that the hon. member for Beaver River was on the wrong track today in her particular criticism. That probably was the sort of area where we could have the trial and error judicial process. Every judicial decision is subject to appeal. There is a discretionary issue for attorneys general and justice ministers, and one can expect, with the proper exercise of the executive process and recognizing that it does not conflict with the legislative process, that judge and company operate together, legislature and executive, and that decisions of this sort, if they are regarded as retrograde by some elements of the community, can be appealed. There are interest groups, more developed in the United States, but some of them in Canada, that have taken this a considerable way in terms of the investigation and bringing cases before the courts.
I think this has been a helpful debate. I thought that one of the questions relating to political parties, whether they should be constitutionalized, was a timely question. I hope there will be occasions in the present Parliament to consider that in some detail. I thank the hon. member opposite who raised the question.