Mr. Speaker, I begin by saying that the Liberal member was formerly a Tory and was formerly in the House. I reserve commenting on the attendance of other parties when I look at the government bench, but I did not rise to talk about that. I did rise to talk about how unfortunate I think it is that so early in this Parliament we have arrived at the state of affairs we have tonight.
While there is an obvious tendency on the part of all of us to enjoy this parliamentary “silly-buggers”, it is unfortunate in the sense that I do not think any of this is really necessary. The government has not sought to engage in serious negotiations with respect to legislative planning. It has done things without consulting the House leaders of the other parties. The Liberals seem to have it in their heads that one day of debate is enough and that they are entitled to take whatever measures are necessary after a day's debate to speed things along.
I just think this is a very bad sign for a Parliament which I had hoped had considerable promise even though it had been dubbed by the media as various things, that it would be a fractious Parliament, a pizza Parliament, that it would be this kind of Parliament or that kind of Parliament. I thought we had a challenge here as five parties to see if we could work together. We started off well but we came to a very unfortunate place in that progress with the closure on the Canada pension plan. And now we have today's situation.
I say to the government that all of this would be completely unnecessary with a little bit of good faith negotiating about what the other parties require and a little less impatience on the part of the government with respect to its own legislation.
I want to say a word to my Reform colleagues because so far I think they have liked what I said.
It has become easier and easier for governments to do this kind of thing because the value of Parliament and the value of politics per se has been so consistently debased by the kind of anti-political, anti-politician ethos that has been stimulated, enhanced and encouraged by many of my colleagues in the Reform Party. The fact of the matter is that governments have found it easier and easier to do this because so little premium is put on political and parliamentary activity.
So much of a premium is put on efficiency and not wasting the taxpayers' money by paying all those people to go on and on and on. But these are the very people who now want to go on and on and on because they think that they came here to say something and that what they have to say is important. Now they are feeling the flames of a fire that they have added fuel to over the last 10 years.
They have fed this cult of efficiency in trying to streamline the public sector and devalue what goes on in political life, in Parliament and in the public sector. It all makes it easier and easier for the kind of despotism that we see increasingly over there on the government side.
They know they have a public out there which has been conditioned to say “Oh well, it is just politicians. Oh well, it is not very valuable anyway. The real decisions are made in the private sector. What decisions that are made should be made fast and efficiently, like they are in a corporate boardroom”.
This is not a corporate boardroom. This is Parliament. This is where people talk. That is what Parliament means, parl-iament. This is the place where we come to talk things out. To the extent that we devalue that function of Parliament, we make it easier for governments and we feed a fire that will ultimately consume all of us, including the democratic process.