Debates of June 14th, 1995

Criminal Code

[Allan Rock, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

moved that the bill, as amended, be concurred in.

[The Speaker]

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Speaker]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Speaker]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Speaker]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And more than five members having risen:

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I do not think the name of the member for Prince George-Bulkley Valley was called. I was listening quite carefully and I would like to ascertain whether it was correctly registered.

[The Speaker]

His name was called and recorded.

(Motion agreed to.)

[The Speaker]

Pursuant to Standing Order 37, because of the delay, Private Members' Business will be rescheduled for another sitting.

The House proceeded to the consideration of amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-69, an act to provide for the establishment of electoral boundaries commissions and the readjustment of electoral boundaries.

Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, 1995

[Herb Gray, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Solicitor General of Canada]

moved:

That a Message be sent to the Senate to acquaint Their Honours that this House agrees to amendment number 4( a ) made by the Senate to Bill C-69, an act to provide for the establishment of electoral boundary commissions and the readjustment of electoral boundaries, and this House disagrees with amendments numbers 1, 2, 3, 4( b ), 4( c ), 5 and 6 for the following reasons:

The bill was, in accordance with the new procedures of this House, prepared by a committee of the House. While amendment number 4( a ) corrects an omission, the other amendments address points, each of which were supported by members representing at least two of the three parties officially recognized in the House. Taken together, the bill represents a balance aimed at improving the responsiveness of the system of readjusting electoral boundaries both to rapid shifts of population and to the operative realities of effective representation of the people, a balance that, in the opinion of this House, requires: a ) in view of the varied Canadian geography and demography, the retention of a variation of up to 25 per cent from the electoral quota of each province (addressed by amendments number 1 and 6( a )); b ) the avoidance of unnecessary electoral boundary adjustments in provinces where shifts of population do not require them (addressed in amendments number 2, 3, 5, 6( b )(i) and 7); c ) the clear acceptance of the non-partisan status of members of commissions through the provision of parliamentary oversight of appointments (addressed by amendments number 4( b ) and 4( c )); d ) the retention of the definition of ``community of interest'' developed on a non-partisan basis by currently serving elected representatives, through a consensus of all parties, in the House of Commons Standing Committee rather than the substitution of another definition (addressed by amendment number 6( b )(ii)).

[Peter Milliken, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to support the motion proposed by the government House leader in respect of the Senate amendments to Bill C-69.

The motion before the House accepts one of the amendments proposed by the Senate to this bill and rejects the other amendments proposed.

I am pleased to support the motion before the House.

[Bill Gilmour, Reform, Comox—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, under a little used section on Private Members' Business, could the Speaker indicate whether that private members' motion will be within the closing session of the next seven days.

[The Speaker]

In response to the question of order it is the responsibility of the Speaker to reschedule this private member's day within the next 10 days.

It is my intention to try to reschedule it before the end of this session. This session is scheduled to finish in the next seven days and I will attempt to put it on there.

[Peter Milliken, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would be glad to assist you in rescheduling it at 3.30 this morning.

I want to go ahead with the speech I have before me. This is an attempt to obstruct my speech and I hope the Chair will put a short end to it.

[Elwin Hermanson, Reform, Kindersley—Lloydminster, SK]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, in light of the proceedings earlier this evening it might be wise to now move that the House do now adjourn.

[The Speaker]

The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands has the floor and the hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster cannot move that motion as a point of order.

[Peter Milliken, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the government fulfilled its obligation in respect of the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act when it appointed a committee to draft and bring in a bill to the House. The procedure and House affairs committee, which I have the honour to chair, worked for a considerable period of time drafting and bringing in amendments to the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act. In most cases the amendments were agreeable to all the members on the committee.

There were only a couple of items on which there was disagreement. I am sure that will be reflected in the speeches from the other parties in the course of the evening. Basically there was substantial agreement on the elements of the bill.

The end result of the work the committee did was to give Canadians a more open, transparent and effective system of readjusting electoral boundaries. The bill which was brought to the House by the government based on the committee report and in substantial compliance with the committee report was adopted by the House following on that committee's work.

In other words, there had been consensus at the beginning. There was consensus basically all the way through, although I respect the fact the opposition parties voted against the bill in the end for two different reasons. One was unconnected with the bill and condemned the bill for something it did not contain. The other was due to disagreement with one of the provisions in the bill which carried on a provision from the previous law that allowed for ridings that vary by more than 25 per cent from the provincial quotient.

As I have indicated, the motion proposed by the government House leader agrees with Senate amendment 4(a) which would add a requirement to the law that members of a boundaries commission be resident in the province for which the commission is established. That was omitted from the bill largely by oversight on the part of the committee and we are happy to agree with the Senate that the provision could be fixed. I acknowledge the oversight on the part of the standing committee and I am glad to see it corrected by this amendment.

However, the other amendments proposed by the Senate in my submission are unacceptable because they would repeal the most important innovations set out in Bill C-69, each of which was supported by at least two of the parties in the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs when introduced and considered in that committee.

These amendments therefore upset the balance struck by the standing committee in improving the system for electoral boundaries and in my view should therefore be rejected.

I respectfully disagree with Amendments Nos. 1 and 6(a) to reduce the maximum deviation from the electoral quota for a province from 25 per cent to 15 per cent. This quota was agreed on after extensive discussion, after extensive hearings in the committee and I admit over the objections of the Reform Party which wanted to reduce the quota to 15 per cent. There is a genuine difference of opinion on that. Members of the Reform Party will likely maintain that difference of opinion tonight.

Members of the Bloc and members of the Liberal Party are both of the view that in a country as large and as geographically diverse as Canada limiting the boundaries to 15 per cent of the provincial quotient, a deviation of 15 per cent either way, would be too restrictive and might result in serious inequities, leaving members to represent enormous ridings scattered over a vast distance with very few people in them but obviously trying to make up for the lack of population by adding to those ridings in a very substantial way.

We do not feel the system in the past has worked that badly. The most recent set of commissions has done a poor job and we have come up with a new and better way of appointing of those commissions and in our view a better way of having the commissions work where there is public input early in the process. That was a provision agreed on by all parties in the committee.

I also disagree with proposed Amendments Nos. 2, 3, 5, 6(b)(i) and 7 which would repeal the provisions that would avoid unnecessary electoral boundaries readjustments in provinces where shifts in population did not require them. Again, this set of provisions was agreed to by all parties.

Why would we spend money on having an electoral redistribution in a province when there has been no significant change in the population, no new seats in the province and the boundaries are more than adequate? Yet the committee formed that view very strongly. We put this in the bill. The Senate has decided in its view this should come out. We disagreed with that and are requesting the Senate simply acknowledge the House is insisting on these amendments and accept that we disagree and allow the bill to proceed.

Amendments Nos. 4(b) and (c) which in my view are unacceptable eliminate the provision of parliamentary oversight of appointments to electoral boundaries commissions. The appointment process in our view had flaws. The committee agreed on this. After extensive discussion in committee we agreed on this new appointment procedure.

Mr. Speaker, under the procedure in the bill you have the right to make nominations of persons to act as commissioners. Those names are to be submitted to the House of Commons and will be considered here. If members object motions can be moved that if carried could result in your having to come up with a new appointment. We think that is a fair and reasonable way to proceed. We supported it. The House supported at the time the bill came here and we hope it will be supported in the Senate later.

Also we disagree with Amendment No. 6(b)(i) which would redefine community of interest by incorporating the definition recommended by the royal commission on electoral reform and party financing. I think all members of the committee considered whether to adopt that definition. The definition was agreed on after extensive discussion among all members of the committee, and there was substantial agreement on it.

Bill C-69 was a good agreement, approved by all committee members on almost all points. There are, however, some clauses in the bill that are not to everyone's liking.

The member for Bellechasse, who is here now, did not agree with the bill, because he felt certain provisions were not included. He will probably talk about them in his speech. That is fine, but unfortunately everybody cannot have everything they want in the bill.

We have before us a fine bill, and I hope that all the members here will support the motion currently before the House proposed by the government House leader to send these amendments and the wishes of the House to the Senate for its consideration and quick adoption of the bill.

[François Langlois, Bloc, Bellechasse, QC]

No, Mr. Speaker, I am not rising to move that the House do now adjourn but to speak to the substantive motion addressed by the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands.

First of all, I may say it is rather ironic that a House whose members are appointed by the governor in council, by cabinet, to all intents and purposes, to sit until the age of 75 tries to teach us a thing or two about democracy in connection with such basic issues as electoral boundaries readjustment.

I am very pleased to see that the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands is listening carefully to my speech, as is the hon. member for Bonaventure-Îles-de-la-Madeleine. We have worked very hard without a hint of partisanship. I would also like to mention the hon. member for Cochrane-Superior who showed a great interest in this bill. The hon. member was instrumental in having the bill drafted in its present form, especially one specific point that I will discuss later on, and I am referring to the 25 per cent deviation from the electoral quota.

I said earlier that the non-elected House, the Canadian Senate, wants to teach us a lesson about democracy, and I think there is something fundamentally wrong with this Parliament. It should be up to us to say that the other House should either cease to exist and be abolished or its members should be elected, one or the other.

In any case, the process started a long time ago with Bill C-18 which suspended for a certain period of time the work of commissions which had already been appointed until June this year so we are getting close to the deadline, and the Committee of the House on Procedure and House Affairs was subsequently instructed to draft a bill.

Strictly speaking, it is not a government bill, although it was tabled on behalf of the Government House Leader. This is a bill that was drafted in committee, before the Standing Committee of the House on Procedure and House Affairs, as I said before.

There was a very broad consensus among committee members on most clauses. In fact, there were far more items on which we agreed than on which we disagreed.

Unfortunately, there was one item on which we could not agree and since it was a fundamental rule, the crux of the whole debate, this meant that the official opposition, the Bloc Quebecois, could not vote for Bill C-69 on third reading. This item was the subject of a motion that I tabled in this House and that was defeated, a motion that guaranteed Quebec a minimum representation rate of 25 per cent, irrespective of its population at the time of the census.

We hope we will never have to apply this minimum guarantee, because in the next federal election, I assume or in any case I hope we will then be living within a new Quebec-Canada partnership so that this legislation would not apply to Quebec, which will have its own legislation that will apply to Quebec's 125 ridings.

This basic characteristic of holding 25 per cent of the seats was, and still is, related to the fundamental notion that Canada has two founding peoples, not equal in numbers but equal in rights. A pact, an agreement, was made in 1867 between two nations: the anglophone nation and the francophone nation.

They decided to pool certain things to be managed by this Parliament and they decided to grant the legislatures of the founding provinces, and those which subsequently joined confederation, specific jurisdictions which made them autonomous and sovereign states, when it came to their spheres of jurisdiction. Did they ever fool us in 1867. And I use the polite term, because I cannot use any other in this House.

Today, the interpretation of events given by our Reform colleagues, in particular the hon. members for Calgary West and Kindersley-Lloydminster, has made us realize that the Canada of today is no longer a bicultural and biethnic country, but a multicultural and multiethnic one: this is not the Canada of 1867, the one in which our fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers and ancestors so strongly believed.

In 1965, the premier, Daniel Johnson Sr., said that Canada will be made up of two nations and two cultures or it will cease to exist. We have already seen this in practice, the proof. Just look at what is happening today. This is what Mr. Johnson said in 1965, Sir George-Étienne Cartier said in 1867, Louis Riel said after him, and Franco-Ontarians were saying at the time that they were making demands-remember Regulation 17 in Ontario- at the time that they were pursuing the issue of having to fund public schools and fund their own private schools, because public funding for their schools was dropped altogether. These are the kinds of things that tend to be forgotten in this country.

There is a tendency to forget the heroic battles led not only by francophones in Quebec, but by francophones outside it and by Acadians to protect their rights. These were major battles. The fight against the Greenway laws in Manitoba. From 1889 on, the rights of francophones were suspended in Manitoba and they were only restored by the Supreme Court almost 100 years later.

Over the past 100 years in Manitoba, the percentage of francophones has gone from 50 per cent, one in every two Manitobans was francophone, to 4 per cent. That is the result of having no constitutional guarantees.

If only we had known. We had no way of knowing or those who should have seen it coming did not. And now we are faced with a situation where the survival of francophone communities, in particular outside Quebec, is a daily struggle. Even the survival of the francophone community in Quebec is a weighty issue, and we have to deal with it every day because each new day brings with it new menaces.

Do not forget that we only represent two per cent of the population on the North American continent. Therefore, we should be equipped with some legal protection in our battle as North American francophones. Where were those who, in the Senate, claimed to have promoted a guarantee of 25 per cent for Quebec?

Where was the senator for Stadacona, the one who claimed to have promoted protection of 25 per cent of seats for Quebec? Where was the senator for Lasalle, the one who claimed that Trudeau had made an offer that Quebec had rejected?

There is nothing in the Senate's report about a guarantee of 25 per cent. The Senate's greatest omission is to have failed to consider the issue of representation for Quebec and probably francophone communities as well, to ensure a guaranteed minimum in this House.

We must not forget that other provinces such as Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick have, because of the senatorial provision of 1915, a constitutional guarantee of never having fewer members in this House than they have senators in the Senate.

Quebec does not have this guarantee. The national home of the francophone people in Canada has no guaranteed representation in this House.

Some passages in Canada's history have been forgotten. Oddly enough, the forgotten bits almost always have to do with one party. I think that we are at the point where, to solve this puzzle, we are going to have to cut our losses and define what should have been defined in 1867, go back to the real spirit of the founding fathers, which was to see the two nations work together, as equals, neighbours and partners.

The Senate's motions in amendment are totally unacceptable, except for one, which merely corrects a technical error we made. The first amendment proposes reducing the allowable variation from the provincial quota from 25 per cent to 15 per cent. For Quebec, which, like Ontario by the way, has no constitutional guarantee as I mentioned earlier-we think about franco-Ontarians who are scattered across a large area and have no more protection than Quebecers at that level-reducing the allowable variation from the quota from 25 per cent to 15 per cent directly imperils the ridings in the Gaspé Peninsula and the Lower St. Lawrence.

I can hear behind me my colleague, the hon. member for Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup, who represents a riding that would be directly affected if the allowable variation from the quota were reduced to 15 per cent from 25 per cent. The only way it would be possible to guarantee adequate representation would be to eat into the metropolitan region of Montreal, to ask ridings in that area, Montérégie and the Laurentides to have 125 per cent representation everywhere. Given the territory, given the uniqueness of the people there, given the fact that the Magdalen Islands are stranded out in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, there is no way we will be able to maintain adequate representation in these regions if we have to accept that the allowable variation from the quota will be reduced from 25 per cent to 15 per cent.

It would also be impossible to keep the riding of Manicouagan, which stretches far to the north and we would be putting at risk ridings like Abitibi, at least in the future-not with the current figures but in coming censuses, if this law were to apply in Quebec.

The same reasoning would certainly apply regarding the boundaries which would be imposed in Ontario's north.

I believe that by maintaining the 25 per cent variation which has been the standard for the past 30 years, ever since the first legislation on electoral boundaries readjustment, we have kept a very sensible provision on the books that allows for making adjustments where necessary.

The 25 per cent variation reflects the situation in rural Canada. The fact is that in Quebec and Canada we have a number of cities with a high population density because of developments that have taken place during the past fifty years. However, rural Canada, which in the process lost some of its population, must maintain a strong and powerful voice in this House.

In the past few days, and I do not have to elaborate, we have seen the effects of reduced rural representation in this House. Some votes would probably have been different if rural areas had been represented as they were 30 years ago in the House of Commons, when the regions were far better represented.

Obviously, we cannot support the first amendment proposed by the Senate. Therefore I suggest retention of the variation of up to 25 per cent from the electoral quota of the province when establishing electoral boundaries.

The Senate also suggests deleting provisions that would allow 20 members of this House to challenge appointments made by the Speaker of the House to provincial commissions instructed to establish electoral boundaries.

I believe this provision is a guarantee that will simply encourage the Speaker to conduct consultations prior to these appointments with the various political parties recognized in this House.

I would be very surprised if appointments made by the Speaker of the House following consultations with the recognized parties were subsequently criticized by members. I think it is quite simply a precaution to ensure that the process follows normal procedure.

So the Senate is asking us to remove this provision. The non-elected House is saying: "You who have been elected by the people do not even have the right to discuss who will sit on provincial commissions and who will be appointed by your Speaker". Let them get on with their own rules, but they better not meddle with ours.

If they want to discuss, we will discuss. We will not, however, be told how to behave by the non-elected House, by the honourable senators, who do not have to put their head on the chopping block every five years, like the members of this House, and who are not accountable for their actions to the public, who are accountable to no one. We will also not support the Senate's proposal with respect to allowing this House to overturn an appointment made by its Speaker.

The Senate is also proposing that the provisions providing exceptions to the establishment of a commission after a decennial census be removed. The best example in this regard is the Province of Newfoundland and the region of Labrador. The latest census reported a change of fewer than 1,000 persons over the previous one, if memory serves me, in Newfoundland and Labrador. However, a provincial commission was set up and it turned the whole electoral map upside down.

We had provided, in Bill C-69, that no commission would be set up in such a situation. We can see that the population did not change and that the population did not shift from one region to another, and so no commission is set up. Taxpayers' money is saved, and people continue to feel they belong to their region. The people of St. John's, Newfoundland, know that they are going to vote in St. John's East or St. John's West or some other riding- Bonavista, for example-it does not matter, the feeling of belonging remains. So, why set something in motion when

there is no need to? We will also oppose the motion the Senate is sending us to this amendment.

We are also asked to eliminate the discretionary power of the provincial commissions to reject changes to the electoral map if these changes are not significant enough. Excessive change must be avoided. Many, I would say, even, almost all, members appearing before the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs in June and July of last year, made the same complaint, regardless of their political affiliation, with a few exceptions among Reform Party members, who wanted to muddle things even more.

But the Liberal and Bloc members who appeared before us all shared the same concern. They wanted to retain this sense of belonging, so that someone who lives in Lachine, for instance, will not be in one riding for one election, in another riding for the following election, and goodness only knows where for the provincial election in between. This was one of the concerns expressed by all the members who appeared before the committee.

Therefore, the provincial commissions should, of course, have discretion to correct certain small problems that may arise because there is a realization that, at a given time, a municipality has closer ties with a nearby town or, economically, leans in a particular direction. The commissions should be able to make these small changes, but not to turn everything upside down if there is no need to. Here, as well, moderation is preferable.

The Senate is also proposing that the notion of community of interest be redefined. In clause 19(5) of the bill we set out the criterion of community of interest as follows:

-"community of interest" includes such factors as the economy, existing or traditional boundaries of electoral districts, the urban or rural characteristics of a territory, the boundaries of municipalities and Indian reserves, natural boundaries and access to means of communication and transport.

The amendment proposed by the Senate would make community of interest the basic criterion from which all subsequent changes would flow.

Let us remember that the amendment which the Senate is proposing and on the basis of which we would have to decide electoral boundaries must be read with the other amendment being proposed by the Senate, which is to reduce the variation from the quota from 25 per cent to 15 per cent, in other words a minimum variation, with community of interest as the basic criterion. The criterion of community of interest is extremely important, except that it comes up against the mathematical wall of the 15 per cent deviation. They cannot seriously be telling us that the boundaries will be defined on the basis of community of interest, having just said that the variation is only 15 per cent, because the criterion of community of interest is subordinate to the 15 per cent variation which the Senate is also proposing.

Therefore, not only am I of the opinion that we must not change our definition of the criterion of the community of interest, but that we also have to retain a variation of 25 per cent from the electoral quota of each province in order for the two criteria to have a real impact in practice. The constituents of Bellechasse, my riding, should know what to expect from one election to the next, which parish could become part of the riding and which one could cease to be, what minor or major adjustments could be made to take demographics into consideration, but still take into consideration the community of interest.

This community of interest is not an abstract notion, it is a notion that can be seen in action. And the people in the best position to define communities of interest, all partisan politics aside, are probably the hon. members of this House who, each day, each week or each month, depending on the distance they have to go, travel the roads of their ridings. And when there are no roads, they take the plane, or use a helicopter, sometimes even a snowmobile or a dog sled-whatever means of transportation is available.

Therefore, who is in the best position to define a community of interest? I will not pass judgment on my own case, but, take the hon. member for Cochrane-Superior, whose riding is huge, for example. Is it he who is in the best position to talk about the community of interest in Cochrane-Superior and to tell us that the town of Kapuskasing is the community of interest for such and such a region or is it a senator from Ontario representing this region who is in the best position to talk to us about it? There can be only one answer: the representatives elected by the public, whose basic mandate is to defend the interests of all of their voters, of everyone who voted for them, of course, but also the interests of everyone, of everyone who voted against them, of everyone who did not vote or have the right to vote, because MPs basically are the representatives of everyone who lives in the territory they represent. What an important role! A role which must not be subordinate to the interests of a minority appointed to the other place, most of whom are there for purely political reasons and were either defeated or were never successful in getting elected in general elections.

It takes some nerve to come and propose amendments on behalf of people who were defeated, people who, with a few notable exceptions, just cannot get elected.

It is high time we slashed government spending, and one of our first decisions should be to suspend the other House for a time, perhaps five years, to find out whether we really miss it. This could be in the form of a constitutional amendment or we could agree to get rid of the Senate for five years. If we really need it, nature, like Parliament, abhors a vacuum. We will create a new Senate and make new appointments according to a system

to be determined by the Canadian people, by the members of the other House.

But for the time being, we should get rid of the surplus. Let us have a garage sale but keep the main House, the House of Commons. We represent the people, and we are elected by universal suffrage. The rule should be that from the president of the largest mining company down to the worker doing the simplest tasks, everyone has the same right to vote so everyone should have the same access to his member of Parliament. The House is what counts.

In Canada there is a consensus on at least one thing: there is one House too many at the federal level, and it is certainly not the House of Commons where people's elected representatives speak on behalf of the people, but the Senate. The problem is to decide whether we should reform the Senate or get rid of it. I suggest getting rid of it for five years.

The Senate does have its uses, however. It pointed out that we had overlooked a clause that would provide that commissioners should reside in the province for which they were appointed. That is what the Senate pointed out to us. This from parliamentarians who in most cases do not even have an office in the senatorial district they happen to represent.

A legal adviser earning a modest salary could have done this. Our employees are not overpaid, and members of the House are not overpaid either for the work they do. If they are, it will be up to the voters to determine whether the member who represents them is getting too much money for the kind of work he does. That is up to the electorate in a general election.

One or two legal advisers could have pointed out that the clause was missing. We do not need a House with 104 individuals and their staff, their operating budgets and all the expense and waste of time that entails. How many bills are languishing before the other House right now?

The bill concerning Pearson Airport has been lying around for quite some time. It was passed in this House when the government first came to power, by a House of Commons that had just been elected, and then put on hold by the other House.

The same thing happened to Bill C-69. In this case, it is even worse because Bill C-69, which concerns electoral boundaries readjustment, is not a case of gerrymandering and is not intended to give special privileges to parliamentarians. Bill C-69 met with a very broad consensus on its wording, with the notable exception of the request for a minimum of 25 per cent of the seats for Quebec. We will have a chance to get back to this issue in the debate that will take place this fall in Quebec. In our proposal for partnership to be extended to Canada, we will suggest a number of institutions where we will have a representation rate of 25 per cent.

That being said, as the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands indicated when he spoke for the government, we will only support the Senate motion that would make it mandatory for a commissioner appointed for the purpose of electoral boundaries adjustment to reside in the province for which he or she is appointed.

I hope that when it comes to a vote, the Senate will sit up and take notice and stop these delaying tactics that are useless, futile and cost money. They prevent us from allowing electoral boundaries readjustment to take its course and, I also hope that these commissions can be set up again so that hon. members and the public will be able to resume the process under the rules established by Bill C-69, and we will have a balanced electoral map for the next general election, in which I do not hope to participate.

[Elwin Hermanson, Reform, Kindersley—Lloydminster, SK]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-69 rings a familiar bell. It was Yogi Berra who said it was déjà vu all over again.

This issue of electoral boundaries readjustment will not go away. Before we get into the amendments that have been proposed by the Senate to deal with Bill C-69, we should quickly review the chronology of events which have led us to today when we are dealing with this bill yet again.

I first became aware of some perceived problems with the electoral boundaries readjustment process when the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands cornered me one evening and said: "We have a real problem with the new electoral maps that are being presented by the electoral boundaries commissions. They are just incompetent. They are doing a terrible job. The boundaries are all drawn in the wrong places. They have made some grave errors and our caucus feels we have to do something about it. We can't put up with this type of incompetence." He suggested that a major review of the whole process needed to be undertaken.

This was shortly after we had launched out on this first session of the 35th Parliament. In fact you could say that those of us who are newly elected were launched from the electoral womb out into the cold, cruel world. It seemed like a number of Liberal MPs were rather unhappy with the uncomfortable climate they found themselves in. They were not prepared for the political realities.

I think there was a little revolt in the Liberal caucus, which I suspect was mainly composed of Ontario members of Parliament, and probably some Atlantic Canada members as well, who found that their boundaries were redrawn and that those people who had elected them and the organizations that had won the election for them had suddenly become irrelevant. They were concerned. They were inexperienced parliamentarians, many were inexperienced politicians, and they were not able to cope with the prospect of change.

With this revolt in the Liberal caucus the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands came with all of this concern. We asked what the problems were. When it came down to brass tacks it was not so much the system that was the problem but the outcome of that system with which they were unhappy. They felt the way to solve the problem was to pretend it never happened, strike new commissions all across Canada and let them redraw the boundaries in a way the Liberal government might find more acceptable. They were quite certain they would be able to draft some master plan, some revolutionary new boundary readjustment plan that would solve their problems.

In March 1994 the Liberals introduced Bill C-18. Not surprisingly, they time allocated the bill. We thought that was extremely unusual. What was the emergency? After all, we had just been elected and they were time allocating this Bill C-18 to suspend the electoral boundaries process so they could cook up some new and wonderful scheme to readjust our electoral boundaries.

We have seen time allocation and closure imposed on this House many times. We should have know then what was coming, that this government is not prepared to deal with reality. It finds unacceptable any opposition whatsoever and uses its clout and the might of its majority to ram things through the House with very little regard to other members.

After the government had suspended the process it had to launch a new process, so it introduced a motion to this House, Motion No. 10. I have an Order Paper from Tuesday, April 19, which has Motion No. 10 in it. For the record I will read the motion:

That the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs be instructed to prepare and bring in a bill, in accordance with Standing Order 68(5), respecting the system of readjusting the boundaries of electoral districts for the House of Commons by Electoral Boundaries Commissions, and, in preparing the said bill, the committee be instructed to consider, among other related matters, the general operation over the past thirty years of the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, including:

(a) an assessment of whether there should be a continual increase in the number of Members of the House of Commons after each census, as now provided in section 51 of the Constitution Act;

I will break there for one minute and review what happened with regard to that instruction put forward in Motion No. 10.

We considered the expansion of the House that is called for under the existing provisions of the electoral act and the Constitution of the country. Our seats currently are 295. Mr. Speaker, as you can tell, we are pretty well stretched to the maximum, but we are going to have to find room for six more seats in this House. It seems very odd that we would want to be adding seats to this House when the trend in Canada is to go the other way.

Currently in my province of Saskatchewan a provincial election is being fought, and it is being fought for fewer seats than in the last election. In 1991, 66 seats were available for the taking in the election. In this current campaign only 58 seats are available to be contested.

I understand there was an election in Ontario the other day. We do not hear too much about that election from members on the other side, but I happen to know that the successful campaigners were also campaigning for a reduction in the size of the Ontario legislature. They wanted to see fewer seats in Queen's Park, not more. And they won. I think they wanted to reduce the seats by something like 30 per cent, if I am not mistaken.

However, do the Liberals in Ottawa, listen to the Canadian public? Do they think Canadians want smaller government or less government? Did they take it seriously when this motion was drafted that stated we should look at reducing the size of the House or freezing the number of seats so it could not expand? Not on your life, Mr. Speaker. They thought they had it made. They thought they were in lotus land and that no one was going to take away any of their seats. They refused to consider reducing the number of seats in this House of Commons. They wanted it the way it was. In fact they wanted more seats. They refused to do anything that would keep this House from expanding. It would have to go on to 301 seats, and in future years, after censuses, they would see even more seats added to this House.

That was the first point in Motion No. 10, to deal with freezing the size of the House and reducing the number of seats in the House, but to no avail.

The second point in Motion No. 10, point (b), states: "A review of the adequacy of the present method of selection of members of the Electoral Boundaries Commissions". Now these commissions were supposed to be terrible. They had done a terrible job, so we really had to revolutionize the way we structure these committees and the way they choose these commissions.

The Liberals scratched their heads and tried to think of ways in which they could recraft the appointment of these commissions. They tried to think of ways in which they could restruc-

ture them. It was almost to no avail. There was a little tinkering around the edges and a few little new wrinkles were put into the process. But if we look at Bill C-69, the bill we are debating here tonight, we will see that the composition of the commissions and almost every aspect of the commissions is very similar to what was in place before.

We have to wonder about the concerns the government expressed in the first place about the way in which the commissions were chosen or appointed and the way they were to function.

We go on to point (c). Point (c) of Motion No. 10 states: "A review of the rules governing the powers and methods of proceedings of Electoral Boundaries Commissions, including whether these commissions ought to commence their work on the basis of making necessary alterations to the boundaries of existing electoral districts wherever possible".

I will admit that there have been some improvements in this area. The fact that there have been some improvements does not justify suspending the process, wasting $5 million of taxpayers' money and getting ourselves into the bind we now find ourselves in, still dealing with Bill C-69.

Those improvements could have been introduced without suspending the process and they would have come into play when the next boundary readjustment took place. While this is one small reward for the fruit of our labour, it certainly was not justification for all the pain this House has had to go through, the procedure and House affairs committee has had to go through, and those Liberal MPs who were so concerned about the process have had to go through.

Point (d) in Motion No. 10 states: "A review of the time and nature of involvement of the public and the House of Commons in the work of the Electoral Boundaries Commissions". Here again some minor changes were made. Hopefully they will be improvements. They were certainly ideas or proposals the members of the Reform Party in the procedure and House affairs committee saw as small improvements. Again, this certainly was not justification for the suspension of the process and for the dilemma we now find ourselves in, having to deal with Bill C-69 once again.

When I began my speech tonight I talked about this all beginning before March 1994 when a panicked member for Kingston and the Islands said: "Disaster has struck. The sky is falling. Our electoral process has broken down and it is irreparable. We have to fix it."

The Liberals introduced Motion No. 10 on April 19, 1994, and with very little improvement over what we had prior to that.

What did we do? Like all good parliamentary committees, we brought in witnesses. Sometimes the government agrees to bring in witnesses and sometimes it does not. If it is dealing with electoral boundaries, which affects MPs, it is very important that members of Parliament be allowed to appear as witnesses before the committee. It is imperative. No MP should be denied the right to appear before the procedure and House affairs committee. However, if it happens to be MPs' pensions, members of Parliament have no business appearing before the procedure and House affairs committee. They were refused the right to appear before the committee. The Liberals found this issue very embarrassing. We have to question the motives of the Liberal government.

However, we had members of Parliament appear before the committee. We also had expert witnesses who appeared before the procedure and House affairs committee. They told us that we have one of the best processes in the world. We talked about what they did in Australia, what they did in Europe, and how the process works in the United States.

When we started to draft Bill C-69 on the basis of the information from the witnesses, we made very few changes. Commissions are still composed of three members. One is still appointed, the chief justice of the province, and two are selected by the Speaker. There are a few new wrinkles and a little more consultation in the process. That is fine, those are small improvements. But again, there is absolutely no reason to suspend the process, as was the case in Bill C-18.

We heard the witnesses and we met with the government House leader, who appeared as a witness before the committee, and then we began going through the clause by clause study of the bill. We made some changes and achieved some improvements. We found that during our initial discussions with Liberal members on key issues of the legislation there was co-operation and often agreement.

I remember the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands telling me: "I think 15 per cent variable quotient is superior to 25 per cent. I agree with you absolutely." However, as we got near the end of the crafting stage of the bill suddenly 15 per cent was just impossible. "It is unacceptable to my members", he said. He said that it had to be 25 per cent, that it just would not fly if it was 15 per cent. Suddenly the members in the committee who had been saying yes, it is reasonable to have a 15 per cent variable quotient, withdrew that support and went back to the comfortable old familiar 25 per cent variable quotient. Here we are in Canada, in 1995, a modern, highly educated, highly developed country, and we have to stay in the dark ages; we have to stay in the days of yore and allow for a wide variant of at least 25 per cent.

We met with Elections Canada officials and they were extremely helpful. They helped us with the technical components of the bill and they provided resources that helped us in the crafting of the bill.

While the Liberals were inflexible on key principles such as the schedule and the variable quotient, and to a degree on the communities of interest, although we were able to make some small improvements there, this bill was passed here in the House of Commons earlier this year and sent off to the Senate.

I should backtrack for a minute and talk about the Liberal backbenchers who came to appear before the procedure and House affairs committee. They were mainly rural members and members from large, growing, urban areas. It was quite interesting to watch the rural members saying "We want to make sure the bill is drafted in such a way that our already very large rural ridings will not be made any larger, so that in areas like northern Ontario, where we have few rural ridings, we will not lose some of those and have even fewer rural ridings and more urban ridings". They were very concerned about that. The Liberal brass, the chairman of the procedure and House affairs committee and other Liberals said "Don't worry. Everything will be fine. We will leave the 25 per cent variable in there and you will be all right."

The members from the large urban ridings came before the committee and said "We are very concerned. Our areas are growing so quickly and we are concerned that we will be representing 200,000 or 300,000 people, like we are now, if we do not have a readjustment process that takes into consideration the growth in our areas."

Now the Liberal brass had to worry about another problem. They said "Don't worry, we have the 25 per cent variable quotient". They said: "We will make sure your ridings are smaller when we start out so there is room to grow and they will not become too large". They are trying to pull the wool over their own members' eyes.

It cannot be both ways. We cannot have the large growing urban ridings with a small population and maintain a smaller rural riding to keep from eliminating rural ridings. It is impossible. The Liberals try to say one thing to urban members and another thing to rural members to try and sneak this through all on the basis of a 25 per cent variable quotient. It reminds me of Liberal economics: It just does not work and it gets us into trouble. The government is going to pay a price for miscommunicating to its members.

The bill was sent to the Senate without Reform approval. There were flaws. Principles were violated that should not be violated, principles of democracy and proper representation. But the government had its way and the bill was sent off to the Senate. Lo and behold, as our leader has aptly said, the place which is known more for its consideration of protocol, alcohol and geritol actually must have read some of the speeches the Reform Party made with regard to the bill because it actually came up with a couple of conclusions that were the same as ours.

We will be speaking to the amendments proposed by the Senate. The hon. member for Calgary West will deal with them in more detail.

In my concluding remarks I will talk about what is going to happen if we expand the size of the House. What does bigger government mean for Canadians? I just got my statement of expenses, what it costs to keep me as an MP here in the House. We have the average as well, so we know these figures are similar for all members.

Currently there are 295 members. The average travel cost of members of Parliament using the 64 point system is $32,885. If we add six more members as Bill C-69 recommends, the costs would add up to over $400,000 because there are telephone costs and other office costs that are not included in the MOBs. If we take the $66,000 it costs to keep each MP and multiply it by six, it comes to about $400,000. Then there is the MOB which is about $185,000 each. If we multiply that by six it adds up to approximately $11 million in additional costs. Then of course there are our salaries of approximately $64,000 which if multiplied by six comes up to $385,000. The expense allowance of $27,000 multiplied by six comes out to $160,000.

Then there is the big one so many people have been talking about, the pension. Of course, Reform MPs will opt out of the pension plan. However if the impossible happened and the six new MPs were Liberals or Conservatives, and I hope that does not happen, or NDPers or members of the Bloc, we could look at about $1 million per MP for pension costs. That would be another $1.1 million.

We are looking at about $20 million or $25 million just in the basic costs of more MPs in the House, not including the costs of handing out contracts if members of the House are trying to wheel and deal and get special deals for-

[Stan Keyes, Liberal, Hamilton West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. I find it curious that we are talking about costs and this is the same member of the same party who just took us through three hours of voting at $48,000 an hour when we could have done it in half an hour.

[Elwin Hermanson, Reform, Kindersley—Lloydminster, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I see by the clock that it is 9.50 p.m. The House was scheduled to sit until 11.30 p.m. because of a special government order. Therefore this party has not cost the Canadian taxpayer one cent. We are taking democracy seriously.

This means that the added costs of having extra members here-