Mr. Speaker, the intent of the bill we are debating at this time is to propose holding a general election every four years on a set date.
A number of parliamentarians may be in agreement with this principle of setting a date on which there will be an election every four years. This has a lot of advantages, one of which is that all of the organizations can get their acts together, to be ready when an election is called.
Since the Prime Minister is the one who holds the power to decide when an election will be held, this gives his party a considerable advantage over the other parties, as far as the organizational aspect is concerned: fundraising, candidate selection, and how the business of Parliament will be conducted.
If, for example, it were known that the election would be on a set date, the government could set itself a four-year program. The first year, it would pass such and such a portion of its electoral program, the second year another portion, and so on for the third and fourth years, and everyone would know we were headed for an election on a set date.
We were elected in October 1993. Last year, around the same time, there was all sorts of speculation about an early election. Some people were even willing to bet that there would be an election last fall, so the organizations got themselves in gear and there were nominations left, right and centre. There we were, not even three years away from the last election, and already talking about an early election.
To a certain extent, Parliament has been paralyzed for the past year, waiting for the day the Prime Minister calls an election. Once again, everything points to his making the announcement this Sunday, which means we will be going into an election nearly a year and half before the end of the mandate given to us by the people.
What happens in such cases is that the government governs by survey. The government orders the polls, the polling firms conduct them, they conclude that the party is popular or not so popular, the public is losing interest, one of the ministers is low in the polls in his own riding, the Prime Minister is, the Conservative Party is going up, the Reform Party is going down, and they are so busy
playing with all these cards that in the final instance they do not care about the public interest, only about the interests of the party in power.
The government can use the polls to set a date when it is likely to be reelected, or in certain other cases, as we saw with the Conservative Party in its last term, it can delay calling an election until the very end, in this case because it knew its popularity was dropping considerably and it were obviously headed for a defeat.
A fixed election date would help make public debates more transparent, more honest, better organized and at least we would know where we are going. It would be more democratic. The public would no longer have to cope with not knowing when the election would take place and it would not be in the position we are in now, when the government is accusing Mr. Bouchard of sending his request for a constitutional amendment at the last minute, although the government still has a year and a half to go.
Calling this a last minute request is rather exaggerated. IfMr. Bouchard had known when the election would be called, he would not have bothered to send a request at this stage. He probably would have waited until after the election or he would have set his agenda with the election date in mind. Organizing the democratic system in Canada in this way would be better for all the provinces, as a matter of fact.
One aspect is somewhat disturbing. We hear the Reform Party talking about referendums here and referendums there, about free votes and constituents voting by telephone or fax. This is a parliamentary system, a democratic system by delegation. We ask the public to elect us to represent them. Unless we change the very principle of the parliamentary system in Canada, we cannot accept all these fantastic proposals by the Reform Party, which wants to play poker by its own rules and not by the rules that suit everybody else.
If a party is elected with a very clear promise that it will do something, the individual elected under the party banner necessarily endorses the party's objectives. So there is no reason for a decision in the House to be taken on the basis of faxes or phone calls received. It is taken along party lines.
When we discuss bills that are not in our programs, we will obviously consult our constituents. We will, however, always be the ones who have to decide, since we are not obliged morally or otherwise to vote in agreement with the 40 or 50 members of our party we consulted or the 50 electors, who are not members of the party but were invited to a public meeting, or according to the three faxes we received. We represent all electors once we are elected and we must use our wisdom and conscience as best we can and act in the best interest of the people in making a decision, because we were elected to represent them.
There are, of course, a lot of details in the bill before us. It would be worthwhile to have a committee consider it, because it could look at some of the problems in greater detail.
Personally, I find it difficult to agree with choosing the third Monday in October as a fixed election date, because winter comes early to many places, and the third Monday of October is surely a bad time for elections, particularly in Quebec where it would interfere with the campaign leading to the municipal elections, which are held on the first Sunday in November. Should the fixed date for federal elections be set in October, we would be in a difficult spot because we would be in a conflict of interest.
The committee would have to take the time to look at what happens in each province, in order to come up with a suitable date. The idea of an election when the days get longer and warmer, around the time of the summer equinox, holds much greater interest. It is much easier to go from door to door when the weather is good than pick a date like October when the days are getting shorter, it is rainy, and there are maybe even snowstorms that would perhaps make things difficult.