Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak specifically to the principle involved here. I am looking at the red book put forward by the Liberals.
Quoting page 91, in the last election the Liberals said:
Canadians have always prided themselves on the quality of their democratic institutions. Yet after nine years of Conservative rule, cynicism about public institutions, governments, politicians, and the political process is at an all-time high.
I parenthesize here to state that they had not taken into account their own hypocrisy with respect to the commitments they were making to the people in the red book because in 1996 it is even higher than it was in 1993.
I continue from the red book:
If government is to play a positive role in society, as it must, honest and integrity in our political institutions must be restored.
The most important asset of government is the confidence it enjoys of the citizens to whom it is accountable. There is evidence today of considerable dissatisfaction with government and a steady erosion of confidence in the people and institutions of the public sector.
This erosion of confidence seems to have many causes: some have to do with the behaviour of certain elected politicians, others with an arrogant style of political leadership.
A few minutes ago the House leader for the Liberals talked about the statement that there were to be people elected from the opposition parties to fill the role of deputy chair. His direct inference-he is welcome to correct me if I misunderstood him-was basically that because it was not in the body of the red book it was not a promise.
On the back page of the red book, appendix B, platform papers, it states:
These policy statements were released by the Liberal Party on the dates shown. Copies may be obtained by writing to the Liberal Party of Canada.
One of the listings is Reviving Parliamentary Democracy: The Liberal Plan for House of Commons and Electoral Reform .
I draw to the member's attention, and if there are any fair minded Liberals in the House I draw this to their attention, that my House leader was reading from Reviving Parliamentary Democracy: The Liberal Plan for House of Commons and Electoral Reform , the document referred to in the appendix of the red book.
Although it appears within the binding of the red book as appendix B, if the House leader and the rest of the Liberals are saying that because this document was not quoted and not included in the body of the red book we cannot take the Liberals seriously, I suggest what we have been subjected to as Canadians with the red book is a trick, a ruse and a deception. There is no other way around it.
I call on all fair minded people in the House to take into account that the Minister of Health, the Minister of Labour, the member for Kingston and the Islands, and the Liberal government whip applied their names to this document which states:
In order to enhance the independence of the Chair and in an effort to reduce the level of partisanship, when the Speaker is from the government party, two of the junior chair officers should be from the opposition, so that the four presiding officer positions are shared equally by government and opposition.
If this was said by those four members, and indeed their names are applied to it, and if this document is referred to within the covers of the Liberal red book, I ask any fair minded member of the Liberal Party to at least abstain and if they have any backbone to vote against this appointment. Otherwise they will be failing on a matter of personal principle.