moved:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should support and work toward enabling legislation for a binding national referendum on capital punishment to be held concurrently with the next federal election.
Mr. Speaker, there are very few things in democratic politics that stir up more contention and trepidation than the use of referenda. There are very few issues in politics that stir up more controversy and emotion than the issue of capital punishment.
That makes Motion No. 431 a motion with potentially far-reaching implications for Canadians. It combines the contention and trepidation associated with referenda with the controversy and emotion surrounding decisions about capital punishment.
However it is important to stress that Motion No. 431 is not calling for a return of the death penalty as some critics would claim. Yes, the issue is contentious, but the underlying principle of direct democracy which led to the filing of the motion is one of the founding principles of the Reform Party.
At a personal level, when I think back over the events of the last 25 years that underlying principle is the very reason I am standing in the House today. It started for me as a teenager in New Zealand 25 years ago when I worked on a campaign to help get elected an MP of the National Party in the Auckland area of New Zealand.
It did not take long for my innocent 18-year old belief in democracy to be shattered by the realization that within a very short space of time party line politics and the power of a party whip could destroy everything that my candidate had stood for. It killed the fires of change burning within him. It killed his resolve. It made him afraid to represent the very people who had placed him in that predicament.
I had a dream those 25 years ago that one day within these shackles we call a parliamentary democracy MPs would be free to represent their constituents and to invite them to help govern the country they work every day to support.
I never dreamed that I would one day be one of those MPs. It was never my ambition to work for change from within the system. Somehow the pieces just came together, one at a time. I joined the party which in 1989 had barely begun. Yet it had the principles of direct democracy as a cornerstone of everything that it stood for.
One of its first policy positions was to state that the people of Canada should have the right to make binding decisions through referenda on issues of personal conscience. Capital punishment is one of those issues of personal conscience and Reform policy material has always identified it as an issue to be put before the people.
I submitted Motion No. 431 in April of this year, well before the controversial Bernardo and Deley cases came before the public. It was selected in the random drawing of Private Members' Business on May 29. In the first week of September I learned that it would be debated in the House today.
The motion reads:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should support and work toward enabling legislation for a binding national referendum on capital punishment to be held concurrently with the next federal election.
Every poll taken over the last decade has shown a major divergence of opinion between politicians and the public on the issue of capital punishment. Like it or not, public pressure will continue to build until we address this divergence of opinion either by bringing Parliament into line with the public or the public into line with Parliament.
Telling Canadians that they will not be allowed to decide is not going to make the problem go away. We need to place a clear question in front of them and allow them to make the final decision. All it takes is for us to agree to have an open and public debate followed by a binding referendum which will do the task of either bringing the public into line with Parliament or Parliament into line with the public.
Unfortunately there is a small problem standing in the way of implementation. Motion No. 431 is not presently votable, which means that the House cannot make its intention clear to the government. Without a vote we will be failing in our duty to represent the people who sent us here. For this reason, before continuing I would like to ask the consent of the House to make the motion votable.