Mr. Speaker, the point I want to make enlarges upon the question I asked the member from Rivière-du-Loup. In his response he has admitted that what he is attempting to do, and assuming he is representing his party, what his party is attempting to do is to use any device possible to delay further work on the bill.
If one stops to think about that for a moment, it contravenes one of the principles upon which the last election was fought. All parties and all politicians were told very clearly by the public that they wanted to see a change in how this House conducted itself. The public wanted to see reforms to the rules of this Chamber. They wanted to see politicians focusing more on issues than on technicalities. They wanted to see us focusing on the things that affected the lives of people and not simply playing the many games
that we can play within an arcane set of rules to disrupt the proceedings of the Chamber.
What has occurred here? The government came into office, laid a plan before the people and began to enact legislation that reflected that plan. After two years, which is the normal midpoint in the life of a government, it wanted to once more put before the people its plan for the next two years. This is quite common and is looked forward to. It is an opportunity for the government to reflect on what it has done and to come forward and state what it has learned, what it feels has worked and where it wants to go from here.
However, at any time when we reach that point, because of the processes that we use and the extensive consultations that we have undertaken, there are bills that are not complete. They may also not be unanimous, which is a fact of life in this Chamber, but at some point we come to a decision. We cannot simply say that because we had not come to that point on a particular piece of legislation that we should throw it on the rubbish heap and start over again particularly in light of the enormous cost. No bill represents that better than the unemployment insurance bill.
The hon. member opposite who spoke just before me was on challenged air, that old plane we flew in across the country. He sat in on the hundreds and hundreds of hours of consultation as people from every community across the country, including Rivière-du-Loup, came and spoke to us. Are we simply to say that all that work was for naught or are we to pick up where we were in the debate and continue to debate, continue to fight and continue to ask the government to move?
The member will have to admit that the government has moved a long way. The bill that is before a committee is very different from the initial thinking of the government. In fact, it is a bill that demonstrates very clearly this government's willingness to consult, to listen and to act on the wishes of people. It is because of the interventions from the member opposite as well as interventions from thousands of people across this country that there have been very significant changes. I would ask the member to remember that process.
The government put a green paper in front of the people of Canada and asked them to respond to it. The government in that green paper set out a number of proposals that represented its thinking about the reforms to UI.
We consulted broadly. The people gave us their responses and we put recommendations in our report that contradicted what was said in the green paper because we respected the consultations we held and we valued the input we received. It went on from there for further work by the minister. He worked very hard and struggled very diligently over the summer to work through each one of those issues and to present even further changes before he introduced the bill.
The bill he introduced was vastly different from the green paper because of the hundreds and thousands of hours of work by Canadians and by members of this House. Now we are in committee on that bill consulting on the details, looking at some final reforms. Even now we hear the new minister talking about further changes, further amendments, further refinements. That is the process of evolution of a very complicated piece of legislation. It is a good process and one that has stood us well.
What we should not do and I think people would not accept is to simply because of a technical game that is played within the House, throw out all of that work, go back to the drawing board and hold the unemployed in this country in limbo for another one or two years. Is that fair to the unemployed? Is that fair to seasonal workers? Is that fair to employers?
It is time to get on. Yes, I respect the hon. member very much. I have valued his input on the bill. I think he has a lot to say in the area of social services and I want to hear him say it. I want him to debate the bill strenuously and I want to benefit from his input. But what I do not want is to spend a lot of time on a procedural debate. I do not want to spend a lot of time arguing how the rules of the House run so that we can disrupt the order of business, or we can throw the government off track by what, one day?
We just saw an example of that with the Reform Party. Reform members refused to allow the tabling of the list of committee members. What nonsense. What has that accomplished? My gosh, it has disrupted the agenda of the government for a day. Is this the kind of message members are going to put in their householder and run home and say: "Look what we did. We disrupted the business of the government for a day. Aren't we heroes".
That is not what people came here to do. People came here to debate, to represent their constituencies, to see that the wishes of Alberta, Manitoba, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec and the maritimes were placed before the House. They came here to question the government, to ask ministers why they are doing what they are doing, and to hold them to account. They came here to vote, to represent their constituents.
That is why we are here. It is not to play silly games, not to spend our time, our energies, our talent and our creativity looking for little ways to put a stick into the spokes of government momentarily. Does that enhance any of us in this House?
If members want to debate the unemployment insurance bill, let us debate the unemployment insurance bill. If they want to debate
Bill C-7, if they want to debate changes to health legislation, let us debate changes to health legislation. If they want to oppose it, oppose it. Let us have a vigorous, hard fought debate. Let us hold the government to account and let us vote. But let us stop the procedural nonsense. Let us get on with the work of this House.
Let us do what the Reform Party campaigned on, what we campaigned on, what the Bloc, the Conservatives and the New Democrats campaigned on. Let us bring some order here. Let us show people that we are spending their money wisely. Let us show people that we take the business of this country seriously. Let us get on with the debates on the issues people want us to debate and stop the procedural bickering.