Mr. Speaker, I too rise in support of Bill C-13, an act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act to permit New Democrats and Progressive Conservative representatives to sit on the Board of Internal Economy.
The amendment of this piece of legislation is in keeping with the spirit of parliamentary reform that brought the Board of Internal Economy as we know it into existence. I refer to the reforms of the House of Commons which followed from the special committee on the reform of the House of Commons, chaired by the Hon. Jim McGrath in 1985-86.
Fewer and fewer of us will recall that prior to that time the Board of Internal Economy was run entirely by the government. Cabinet ministers and government backbenchers sat on the Board of Internal Economy. There was no opposition representation on the board.
This had dubious advantages in the sense that opposition members never had to take any responsibility for the management of the House of Commons or for the decisions taken in that context. It was the feeling of the special committee on the reform of the House of Commons that the House, like other parliaments in the democratic world, should involve the opposition in the management of its affairs.
A recommendation was made in the report of the special committee, sometimes known as the McGrath report, which led to legislation that permitted members of the opposition to sit on the Board of Internal Economy.
As with many things we tend to be creatures of our own time and context. The legislation drawn up at that time assumed a three party House for ever and ever. The legislation was drawn up to reflect that reality, which turned out to be a contingent and temporary reality.
We found ourselves in this Parliament with five recognized parties and a piece of legislation that did not permit the spirit of reform to be lived up to unless there was an amendment such as the one we now have before us. Once passed it will enable all five parties to be represented on the Board of Internal Economy, the spirit of the McGrath report to be respected in its entirety.
I am very glad, as the last surviving member of the McGrath committee in this House, to see that this report is still alive and well, in some respects anyway, and that the Parliament of Canada Act is being amended accordingly.
To a couple of things that were said by my colleague from the Bloc Quebecois I would want to take issue with at least one thing he said when he spoke about the regionalization of the House.
I know he was not intentionally oversimplifying but I want to remind him that there are New Democrats from the west. It is not only Reformers in the west. In my home province of Manitoba NDP members outnumber Reform members four to two.
I notice the obsession with proportionality. Agreed that the Bloc has put aside this attachment to proportionality just as the government had to put aside its initial position in respect of the Board of Internal Economy in order for us to come to a workable solution on this.
I commend the Bloc for that but I ask the member to reflect on the fact that the position of the Bloc and of Quebec in general is not always one of strict proportionality when it comes to other matters having to do with the Constitution, having to do with amending formulas, having to do with the percentage of Quebec seats in Parliament.
In many other debating contexts it is not the traditional position of Quebec that proportionality is the first principle that needs to be held up. Perhaps that is why, in the final analysis, the Bloc was willing to make the compromise that it did.
Sometimes groups or provinces or institutions are entitled to representation by virtue of their status as opposed to their numbers. What we are representing here today is that all political parties need to be on the Board of Internal Economy. That fact has been recognized and I welcome this development.