Mr. Speaker, think of all we can do in five minutes. It is fantastic.
So, I was reminding you of how pleased I am to speak on Bill C-63 because the type of representative we will establish as parliamentarians depends on it.
I was reminding you of how sad I am to see that the government did not include the opposition parties in this House, that is, the official opposition and the third party, in the consultation and drafting process of this bill.
And I was reminding you of how proud we are, as an opposition party, to have been able to depend on the hon. member for Bellechasse, who combines the qualities of a highly skilled lawyer and those of a seasoned parliamentarian with such flair.
I was also reminding you of all the motions we have to put forward because this bill leaves so much to be desired. We hope that the government will agree to those amendments, because we believe that they will be better for democracy.
I was reminding you of how easy it can be, in this democratic system of ours, to make ourselves heard, even when one comes from a humble background-and I am certainly a case in point-since I, the son of a labourer, was able to run for office and get elected in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve after a campaign that cost only $35,000. When we come to think of it, it is really not much,
compared to the Americans who almost have to be an official member of a lobby to be elected.
We know that the quality of our electoral practices depends on a number of things. We brought to the attention of the government the fact that there is a means to keep the process under control, which is called a list of electors.
You know how important this voters' list is, since it supposedly contains the names of all the people who can vote and who, as we know, meet a number of requirements in terms mainly of citizenship, age and place of residence.
We have questions regarding the government's refusal to allow the age of voters to be shown on the list of electors. It is a questionable position. The more the list will include detailed information, the easier it will be for all parties concerned to identify cheaters. There is nothing partisan about that.
You will certainly understand that if, on election day, workers at a polling station greet at their table a man named Réal Ménard who, according to the list of electors, is 34 years old and the person standing in front of them seems to be 70 years old, they will know that something is wrong. The vigilance of the staff on election day will help identify cheaters and stop the voting process when unauthorized people show up at the poll. I think the government's position to refuse such an argument is questionable.
The same thing applies to gender identification. It is not a matter of quality or quantity, but simply a matter of knowing if we are dealing with a male or a female voter. I take these things very seriously and it seems to me that it would be in our best interests to have as much information as possible in order to identify cheaters.
We cannot accept the rather obsessive argument of the Reform Party that the availability of this information will lead to sexual harassment. It is true that the list of electors is a public document and that the chief electoral officer has to make it available to any individual or group upon request. But I still do not think the Reformers' argument is valid.
The existence of such a list is not the kind of factor that would encourage people who have a predisposition towards sexual harassment to act on their impulses. We do not want to minimize the importance of this extremely complex problem, but there is certainly no correlation between the amendment we are proposing and the kind of legislation the Reform Party wants to see passed in this House.
We are much too aware of the importance of representation. We know only too well what it means to have an elections act that is truly reflective of the wishes of all parties. I believe the member, whose riding escapes me for the moment, but of which he, no doubt, is the worthy representative, knows the importance of consensus in this matter. It is not true that in matters of legitimacy, in matters which concerns us as parliamentarians and members of Parliament, we can afford to do without a real debate.
It is not true that we should be delighted by the haste shown by the government. This government did not show a lack of courtesy when the time came to consult us on the issue of riding redistribution and revision of the electoral map.
The hon. member for Bellechasse is in a very good position to confirm that we were very closely involved in the process. He reminded us that, with the help of all parties represented in the House, we took more than a year to do the required revision work.
Why the sudden haste, the lack of courtesy on the part of the government and its representatives, who decided not to call upon the opposition parties, since we know that the House would have come out of this a better House? Think about the impact we would have had if we had been able to say that the bill before us, Bill C-63 to amend the Elections Act, is truly what all parties in the House wanted. I believe the government treated this matter off-handedly.
I think that the government did not live up to its responsibilities, and certainly lacked courtesy, by not allowing the opposition to fully participate in the review and enhancement of such an important bill.
Mr. Speaker, I know that you are as committed to democracy as I am, and that makes you a very endearing Speaker, but do you not think that it would have been advisable to take advantage of the debate to discuss the funding of political parties?
I know that in a few minutes we will have the opportunity to discuss this matter, but I believe that it would have been wiser for the government to go back to the basic meaning of the word. It would have been a lot better for the government to draw inspiration from the practices currently in effect in Quebec.
As you know, and I will conclude on this, there has been for more than a decade in Quebec a political party financing act which is extremely democratic. And I will get back to this later.