Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague who shares the southern borders of our province, the hon. member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands. The day after the June 2 election one of the press people came to me and said “What do you suspect will happen in the House when you get there, given the fact that there are four opposition parties and the Liberal Party, the governing party opposite”.
I said to that young reporter “I expect that it is going to be 240 versus 60”. That is the way it has been. When we bring common sense legislation in, we see 240 lining up to vote against the 60 people that come here.
I come from the highest taxed province, Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan is the highest taxed province in Canada right now. When I hear people talking about this being very expensive to have one electronic sheet placed in everybody's income tax forms, to be filed through electronic machines in each province on the computer, any government should welcome this. They would have more public opinion than a thousand town hall meetings and they would have it every year in April. By April they would know what the people across Canada are thinking. They would know that the thoughts of British Columbians differ from those of the maritimes. At least they would have before them a truly volunteered opinion coming before them at very little cost.
No one in this House can say that this is an expensive measure as far as democracy is concerned.
If any government were to take a look at a sheet coming in like this, they could look down at the constituency of my colleague and see that 88.8% of the people are opposed to government expenditures in the matter of gun registration. The amount of money that they would save in gun registration over the next five years would pay the bill of the tainted blood inquiry and Canada could walk away free.
We spend more money because some brainwave comes into existence with no feeling toward the public whatsoever. Any government that really wanted to be truly representative would say “We can do this in a minute. We can have this ready in April. We can have a form filled out and it would come through. It would not have to be touched. It would be automatically recorded and there the government would have the party's opinion”.
I wonder what the people of the provinces of Ontario and Quebec would think if the people in the four western provinces were paying $2.90 for a package of cigarettes and here they were paying $5.70. I am sure they would be complaining.