Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for his question about the operation of committees. There has been some discussion about the British parliamentary system. There is a lot of tradition involved in the operation of this place. That is absolutely true.
However, all it takes is the political will to change these things which have been in place for a very long time. Most of these things were put in place to fit a time that has long gone, a time when the people were not well-educated and when communications were not very good.
When Edmund Burke said: "You don't do your constituents any favour by representing their will", that was 200 years ago. Today we live in the information age. Our constituents are exceptionally well-informed. They know what is going on in the world. They can find out the minutest detail about what is going on in this place.
I am sure all members have experienced from time to time constituents who know more about a particular bill and its possible problems or benefits than they do. There is a member over there from the islands who said that he never reads the bills. There are constituents out there who take a direct interest.
The suggestion from Reform is that we can run on a general mandate of what we stand for but within that we must have flexibility to suit the information age and the flexibility to adapt that agenda to comply with the will of the people, the people who, after all, are paying our salaries. This means that when a committee goes travelling across the country taking submissions, it should truly take democratic submissions so that it is not a predetermined outcome and that it truly wants to know what Canadians want and is prepared to have the political will to adjust its agenda and get away from partisanship.
It does not happen very often. If we look at the past three years in this place, I have had to vote three times contrary to my party mandate in order to represent my constituents' wishes on government bills. Therefore, it is not something that happens every day. It is on very carefully considered issues. I do not suffer any consequences from being able to do that.
It is a new democracy. All it takes is the political will. I would urge members to get behind these changes so that we can get real democracy in this place.