Madam Speaker, every member of Parliament knows the Bloc is being favoured as official opposition. Any objective analysis would also demonstrate and come to the very same conclusion. This is a growing, daunting realization by the Canadian public. Whenever we have that kind of circumstance there is a reaction somewhere down the road. The government should think about that very seriously.
The government has its own agenda and I am not exactly sure what it is. However, with the majority the government holds it has a unique time in our history to really create a circumstance for democratic freedom and for improving the way this place works, but it is blowing it.
We have heard some very weak arguments from the Bloc, especially in my critic area of aboriginal affairs, as to how effective they are in the rest of the country. The Bloc has been happy to run around Canada encouraging spending and the inherent right to self-government among aboriginals as long as they are not in Quebec.
At the same time, I and other members in my party have as a matter of course worked in Indian country in Quebec where the Bloc has totally dropped the ball. Do we trumpet this from the trees? Do we run around making speeches about what a great job we have done in the province of Quebec? No. This is a much more heartfelt item than that. This is beyond politics. The whole area of aboriginal affairs should in many respects be beyond politics.
There is hardly a single thing done by the Bloc where the motivation is not to further the separatist vision of Quebec.
Why should I have to go into committee knowing full well that as an opposition member the government wants to favour that other party member over me? I have sought to remedy the electoral unfairness or favouritism which I observed in committee last September. This was very difficult. Committees are supposed to be masters of their own house and, for very good reason, the Speaker is reluctant to interfere.
The problem starts with the numbers. Government members on a committee outnumber the combined opposition members. The whip can orchestrate what happens in committee.
We obviously need a secret ballot in committee. How the House of Commons, where our federal democracy is supposed to be expressed, does not adopt this bit of progress to prevent the possibility of government backbench coercion is beyond me, other than the government likes everything that happens around here to be in its full control. To elucidate some of my concerns, I would like to read a bit from my submission of September 20 last fall to
demonstrate my observations on trying to even nominate a Reform chair or vice-chair to the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs.
This committee has a history of past irregularities, including the case to which I have drawn your attention. The irregularities from yesterday are as follows.
First, as soon as the clerk's gavel fell I submitted a motion to elect a chairman. As Your Honour knows, under the standing orders the first item of business for an organizational meeting is the election of a chair for the committee. However, the clerk acknowledge my speaking and asked me to wait until he had read his first item of business. I asked that he recognize that I had given notice of a motion. After the clerk read the item of business he proceeded to recognize someone else first.