Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House today to speak on some of the issues the Liberals have tried to convince us are right. Finally we see the light of day and they see the light of day.
We are seeing that the electors in the last election were kind of double crossed. They are finding out they elected a party that does not keep promises, that is, a party that is not of action. It is a party of misguiding the constituents and the electors. That will change in the next election. It will be back in the opposition benches if at all.
One thing that really surprises me is that members on the other side were so honest and probably sincere with their comments in the last legislature that they were not afraid to get up and call a spade a spade, and try to run on that basis during the election.
As a farmer it has been a disappointment to me when I see they have made huge promises of how they would reorganize agriculture, how they would go to the farmers for some input in marketing, how they would allow these people to make the needed changes and yet did not fulfil those promises. I do not think they ever intend to.
When I see what is happening in the agriculture field today, they are trying to more or less digress from what they said and put more government rules and regulations into the system to get more control over food processing and agriculture marketing.
It was astounding to me when I read an article in the Ottawa Sun about a year ago when the former agriculture minister was a little upset. Mr. Whelan, a man I always respected very highly in agriculture during the early years when I farmed, said: ``We have gone from a corporate, capitalist, democratic system to a non-democratic, czarist, socialist system''.
Hold it a minute, boys. That is something I thought I would never hear from an agriculture minister who served in the House, a Liberal saying we had gone from a democratic, corporate system to an undemocratic, czarist system. That is what eastern European countries have experienced and we know what the results have been there.
Is this something the Liberal government will keep promoting in the House when I see, during the elections of the standing committees, we do not even have a ballot to elect a vice-chair? Somebody from the hierarchy dictates to the Liberals on the standing committees how to vote.
What does that remind us of? That reminds us of a Hitler or a Stalin telling his people exactly how to vote. Is that not correct? Democracy to me means voting by ballot in seclusion where nobody knows how we vote. It is supposed to be free.
Look at what has been done in the House over two reorganizations. Last fall we went through the same issues and the same principles. People were told how to vote. "We would rather have a separatist party siting as official opposition than you real Reformers".
Real reform is what the House needs; not just the word reform, it needs real reform. That is the only way we can start addressing some of the problem in the House. It will not be done by backbenchers moving their heads in conjunction with the rope those on the front benches pull. It is like puppetry.
That is not a democracy. That sounds more like a kids game, which is what I see happening a lot of times in the House. It seems we are not really trying to run the country, we are trying to control the minds of the people and their ideas by the way we influence one another, the same way cabinet influences backbenchers.
Backbenchers for some reason are trying to influence the opposition into seeing they are correct. They are trying to make us believe we really do not know what the issues are. That is very sad. When we start manipulating minds and ideas we go back to what the former agriculture minister said, an undemocratic csarist system. That really scares me. In all the countries where there has been that type of democracy, a csarist system, people began starving not just for food but for ideas and freedom to vote.