Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak in favour of Motion No. 267. I would first like to agree with the member from the Bloc who indicated she was quite disturbed by the speech given by the first member on the government side, the member for Fundy-Royal. It seemed like a very aggressive attack on the intent of this motion.
The member for Mission-Coquitlam spoke at length about the changes that have happened in other parliamentary democracies to free up the process. They have abandoned the restrictive practices that we still see practised here in Canada. Even the mother of our own Parliament in the U.K. has abandoned a lot of these restrictive practices we still see in this place.
What the member for Fundy-Royal called hundreds of years of parliamentary tradition is more like hundreds of years of parliamentary repression. We really need to break through that cloak of protection that the government has and get some of the people's business on the table.
Motion No. 267 addresses a very serious problem and I am sure it is one that has touched almost every member of this House in one way or another. All too often a votable private member's bill gets shuffled off to a committee never to be seen again, making a mockery of the entire parliamentary process.
In addition, because deliberations at the subcommittee, which determines which bills are made votable, are held in secret, no one ever knows why the bill was or was not made votable in the first place. Frankly, the frequency with which these tactics of repressing private members' bills are used is alarming, particularly when one considers that it was this government that promised during the last election campaign that it would overhaul the processes of the House and make Parliament more transparent and democratic.
It is all very well for the government side to allow its MPs a free vote on a private member's bill in this House, but now it is using the committee to stall the bill instead of stalling it here on the floor of the House of the Commons. What did we really achieve? If anything, all it has done is put it behind closed doors so that the public cannot see the government side rejecting it or manipulating the rejection.
In fact, this entire problem that we are discussing here today is only a symptom of a larger malaise which has plagued this House for decades, namely that almost all the power is wielded by the Prime Minister and a small group of people around him, leaving the rest of us, and unfortunately our constituents along with us, having almost no say in the way the country is governed.
I am frequently reminded of the sorry state of democracy in Canada when constituents ask me whether MPs are actually able to serve any useful purpose if they are not allowed to act independently of the leader or the party when they need to represent the views of their constituents. When I am asked that question, it is pretty difficult to identify any situation in this House where a voting machine could not produce exactly the same result. It seems to me that maybe the entire government side could be automated and connected to the Prime Minister's chair and not even bother turning up. There could just be one button for the Prime Minister to press.
This is precisely the kind of arrogant, patronizing, top down control that the people of Canada are starting to reject. We really have to see the system opened up a bit.
Not only are ordinary Canadians pretty well unable to participate in the legislative process, they are not even informed of the reasons behind the decisions that are made. Bills put forward on their behalf by us, their elected representatives, often simply disappear into committee, as most of the members have said here today, whether or not they are made votable.
It is time to bring a measure of true democracy to our parliamentary system and open the entire private members' business to public scrutiny. That means the subcommittee that decides whether or not a bill should be votable should also be open and we should
see its decisions so that our constituents can find out the reasons why our bills are not made votable.
I have an example of my own, Bill C-333, a bill which would deport criminal refugees in lieu of sentence when they are found guilty of breaking Canada's laws. That bill was put together with the assistance of the lawyers of this House and by a crown counsel in my riding, a Liberal supporter, a person who has put himself forward for nomination as the Liberal candidate in my riding, an experienced person who knows how the system works. What happens? The bill is made non-votable. I do not know the reason why. I have no idea. I write to the minister to ask for support for the bill and I get a non-committal letter back saying how interesting it will be to hear the debate.
There should not be a situation where skilled people put together a bill that is warranted, that needs discussion in this House and we cannot even get it votable.
This sort of action allows the government to put a stop to private members' bills without going through the embarrassing process of actually voting on them. If the government wants to defeat a bill, it should do it right here in the public view where everyone can see what is happening, instead of it being restricted as it was in the case of the member for Mission-Coquitlam to a few grandparents who were able to travel all the way to Ottawa to sit in on a committee meeting and see what happened in that place.
All I can hope for is that they have gone back to their ridings, to their groups and organizations and are telling people the travesty of democracy that can occur in these committees.
Too many pieces of good legislation that have passed through this House are mired in committee proceedings and never come back.
The single most powerful argument in favour of this motion is that when a bill receives approval at second reading, the elected representatives in this place are approving it. We have given a message to the people of Canada openly in public in this place that we approve of this legislation. It should not be up to the committee to find personal reasons, as we heard with due respect from the member opposite, why committee members do not like the bill. It should be their job to make it work.
In the instance of the bill of the member for Mission-Coquitlam there were witnesses before that committee, lawyers, who said this bill is needed, which contradicts the personal opinion of the member opposite. There were plenty of examples from the United States where similar legislation works.
It is not up to a committee to thwart the will of the House. The committee should have reported this bill back with amendments, if necessary, ways in which the legislation could be made to work, not a rejection of a decision of this House.
While Motion No. 267 will not solve all the problems associated with our parliamentary system, obviously there are many areas to fix, it does take an important step toward making the committee process and the private members' business process much more democratic.
The motion, if passed, will be of benefit to all MPs, indeed all Canadians and as such I urge all members of the House to support it. My only fear is that the motion, if passed, will end up in a committee somewhere and have the same fate that so many bills before it have had, which is to disappear forever and to make no difference at all to the way this place operates.