Mr. Speaker, in addressing this private members' bill, I would first like to turn to some of the comments from the Reform member opposite who just spoke. I will address three or four of his points and try to clarify what are some obvious misunderstandings.
The member spoke to the issue of accountability in government. I would remind him if he has not had the opportunity to study how the American system works that there the separation of the three branches of government virtually insulates the president from any accountability in the legislative branch whatsoever.
The president of the United States is never in the Congress except at their invitation. He is not, like the Prime Minister of Canada who is present daily in the House of Commons, in the legislative branch daily along with his ministers fielding questions from opposition parties.
We have in the parliamentary system the greatest possible degree of accountability of any democratic system in the world. For the member to raise that issue is simply for him to have a misunderstanding about our system and how accountable it is vis-à-vis the congressional system for example.
I was reaching to see the relevance of some of the member's comments, but I guess he tied them in just enough to stay on top. The Reform member brought the GST into the debate and the fact that our party had only printed 100,000 red books. He asked how could we expect Canadians to understand what we said in writing on the GST.
I welcome that comment and this is why. In January I held two town hall meetings in my riding. I knew this issue would come up, which it did. I shared with the people my own flyer which I distributed door to door in my own riding. It was a one page flyer, not a hundred page red book. It was a one page flyer which I personally took to their homes. The flyer spoke to the issue of the GST. It said that this party would harmonize the GST, that we would replace it with a tax that was fairer and simpler.
It is an absolute red herring for the member to comment that because we had a limited number of red books our electorate could not be expected to know our stand on the GST. Any responsible member and all the colleagues on my side of the House campaigned responsibly and took their own literature to the doors of the constituents they were seeking to represent. They took the constituents' questions at their doorsteps.
The Reform member also spoke to the issue that the opposition now has a very limited time to get its message across under the 36-day campaign period which has just been passed by the parties in the House of Commons. I would submit that if the opposition parties are relying strictly on the campaign period to explain their proposals to the people, their alternate visions of what the government should be in this country, then they are totally misunderstanding what the House of Commons is all about. They should be putting forth that message and those concepts day after day in the House of Commons.
I have been very disappointed to see how badly the Reform Party uses question period. It gets hung up on irrelevant issues. Day after day it fails to take maximum benefit of question period. There have been many days when I and other colleagues of mine on this side of the House would have loved to have had the opportunity to be in opposition just for a day. Then we could fire some more relevant questions which would liven up the debate. Question period has been pathetically used by the Reform Party and frankly the record speaks for itself. The toughest and most relevant questions have often come from the Liberal members, as our own ministers are well aware.
The Reform member failed to mention the fact that shortening the election campaign period to 36 days will save the Canadian taxpayers millions and millions of dollars. The creation of a permanent voters list will save millions and millions of dollars.
Maybe he does not know Canadian history but he failed to note that the 47-day campaign period goes back to the last century when leaders travelled by train, when we did not have the advantage of television, when we did not have jet travel. Everyone who has been involved in a federal election campaign knows that the public basically tunes in during the last 10 days or two weeks. The interest becomes higher at that point, so there is no need for a 47-day campaign.
To move to the issue of this private members' bill and to fixed dates for elections, I think it is a well intentioned but simplistic idea. This is not the United States. It is not a congressional system where we can fix the dates easily.
One idea I have not heard in this debate is that the Governor General of Canada does not have to grant the Prime Minister a dissolution. There is the right of the Governor General, which has been used in this country in the past but not without some controversy, to say: "I reject your reason for calling an election. I will not dissolve the House of Commons. If you are not prepared to carry on, I will call on another party to form the government". No one has brought that into this debate.
The idea that any government or any prime minister could frivolously, strictly for political advantage, call an unwarranted election simply does not bear scrutiny in a reading of Canadian history. I would invite the previous speaker to look up the King-Byng crisis if he does not know to what I refer. It has not been done lately by a governor general but it is a power that he does have and can use if he feels that there is a frivolous call for an election by a prime minister.
The system we have has served us very well for 130 years. It has been responsibly used by prime ministers of different political stripes. I would submit that we are not the United States. I am not anxious to see an Americanization of our system. Quite frankly, I think some of that has happened with our supreme court which I for one am not very excited about. I do not think we want to further Americanize our parliamentary system of government by these fixed dates for elections.
I come from a municipal government background. Fixed dates work well at the municipal level. However, that is not the case here at the federal level. I would submit that our system of leaving the responsibility to the prime minister and having that person and his party answer to the ultimate judge of the propriety of an election ought to be the Canadian electorate. They can very well determine if the election was warranted or not.
The system has served us very well for 130 years. I submit it will continue to serve us very well. While I know the bill by the member of the Reform Party is well-intentioned, I cannot support it.