Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-16.
I do not know whether everybody here knows the full implications of the bill. It is certainly a good housekeeping bill. As has been indicated, it went through committee and there were no amendments because the bill as it stands presumably is fairly good. It solidifies and gives legislative approval to some very necessary provisions. It provides that we should have agreements with countries with which we have a flow of capital, in which people are investing and where there is money earned. It is reciprocal.
The bill is an act to implement agreements between Vietnam and Canada, between Croatia and Canada, and between Chile and Canada. Whether some of their people invest in our country or vice versa, this bill has some tax provisions to avoid double taxation.
Before I discuss the bill's provisions I will talk about the S in Bill S-16. This is very relevant to the bill. A bill that begins with a C originates in the House of Commons, the House to which people are elected and whose members are obligated to represent their constituents. On the government side in particular there are numerous examples of situations in which MPs are not permitted to represent their ridings and the people who elected them. On command they stand up and vote the way they are told.
At least every four or five years, or three and a half years if the government gets scared as it did the last time, voters have the opportunity to put an x on a ballot and give either their approval or disapproval for what a particular member stands for and to indicate whether they believe that member did a good job in representing the riding.
It is significant that in the last election the number of Liberals elected went down quite a bit. The Liberals went from having a very healthy majority which allowed them to go off and do whatever they wanted without having to worry about having enough people in the House, to what is now a very marginal majority.
The Liberals have very few members to spare. As a result, there were two occasions in this parliament in which there were no Liberals in the House at all. This allowed us to pass things that are good for the people. The latest example is the changes made to the Private Members' Business procedure. The changes give members some freedom to represent their constituents despite the draconian control of the party over its members. Private Members' Business is a very important part of representational democracy.
The C at the beginning of a bill number indicates the bill comes from the House of Commons, which represents the common people. That is where bills like Bill S-16 should come from. On the other hand are the S bills which originate in the Senate.
I forgot to mention that while the number of Liberal members went down in the last election, the Reform membership went up by 20%. It is an absolute indication that Canadian people are ready for a higher degree of democracy. They are ready to have people in this House who will represent them.
Let me get back to the S bills, which originate in the Senate. Who are the senators? Some look at them as being hockey players. The only problem is they do not really have to answer to anybody. If the coach says to go and play somewhere, well they can or they cannot. It depends on who the coach is. If it is the Prime Minister who appointed them, then they will jump to attention. But it is the people they represent who pay for their salaries, pensions, travel, offices, and for their Mexican—but I should not say that as it is over. They do not have to listen to people in their ridings. And there are actually Liberals in the House who continue to defend this.
Last night we debated a private member's bill that said that senators should be elected. What can possibly be wrong with that?
Ask any Canadian what he or she would rather have. We all acknowledge that the Senate is part of parliament. Would Canadians rather have a person in parliament who is elected by the accumulation of more votes than the other candidates in the area that he or she represents, or would they rather have someone else pick them? I do not think we would find one Canadian in a thousand who would say “I think it is important that they be picked because we are not smart enough. We do not want democracy. We do not want to have a say in that”.
It is absolutely absurd. Yet this government continues time after time, year after year to break election promises on it and to do nothing about it. The Prime Minister said “We will have an elected Senate”. He said during the 1993 election campaign that within two years of a Liberal government being elected that we would have an elected Senate. Then he went on to say that as the Prime Minister he could make that happen.
I guess that was as good a vote getter as promising to kill the GST and it went the same way. After the Liberals came to power they did not kill the GST. They increased it by about 100%. That is what happened with the harmonization.
And what has happened on the promise with making the Senate elected, something the Prime Minister could do just by simply saying that he would do it? All he would have had to do instead of giving a great big insult to every Albertan in the country was to say “Yes, people, if you want to choose your own senators, I will be honourable enough and will appoint that one because that is the way it is right now. I will appoint the one that you select. You give me the list and I will choose from that list instead of from my own list of Liberal hacks”.
Sure, every once in a while he picks somebody who does not have Liberal credentials. Every Canadian can see through that ruse. That is a way of trying to legitimize it. Yesterday in the debate one of the members opposite said that Mr. Manning was an appointed senator. That is Mr. Manning, the father of our leader so I am not breaking any House rules. He was appointed. Well of course.
There are people appointed to the Senate who do not have tight Liberal connections. Every once in a while there is one. Why? Because it only takes a little bit of salt to affect the taste of the whole bowl of soup. Put in a few of these little grains of salt, really honourable people who have credentials beyond just being Liberal Party supporters and participators and that gives some air of respectability to the process. But it is a phony process and it needs to be stopped. It is time on behalf of Canadians to stop this charade of appointing people. Democracy is not served by it.
The purpose of the Senate should be to balance powers. Power only works properly in a democracy if there is a proper balance. Checks and balances we call them. We need in the Senate a balance against the dictatorial power of a single person in the House who can control majority members in the government and then can turn around and control majority members in the Senate.
Since the bill is about taxes, I should talk about the GST. During the GST debate several parliaments ago the majority of Canadians said nyet . I should speak English or French; they said no or non. They said they did not want the GST. In my riding 85% of the people were reputed to say that the GST as proposed was bad. They did not want it, but the prime minister of the day sat in his seat and told his members they would vote for it whether or not they wanted it.
The MP for Elk Island voted for the GST. It was one of the things I heard more often than any other during the campaign. People said they would not vote for him again because he did not vote for them on the GST. He voted against them.
I said the Reform policy is that I will represent them. If there is a clear indication from my riding that my constituents have a certain wish on a bill, I will represent that. I am so proud to be a part of a party where that is not only permitted but required. I would be in trouble with my party if I failed to do it. In the other parties, whether it is Liberal, Conservative, NDP, or even Bloc, I suppose, if members do not vote the party they get punished. It is just the opposite in my party. It is time we had a truly democratic Reform government.
What did the prime minister of the day do when the GST bill went to the Senate? In that chamber of sober second thought there was a majority of Liberal senators at that time and the present Liberal government was on the opposition side of the House. They said no to the GST. The present Prime Minister who was then the leader of the opposition said that if they got in they would kill it.
That is what happened at that time, but the prime minister of the day wanted the GST. He had all his Conservative MPs rise when their strings were pulled. Then it went to the Senate where bad bills are supposed to be stopped. Indeed the Senate stopped it because a majority senators, either for the sake of discipline to the Liberal Party of the day or for Canadians as a whole, said no to it.
What was the response of the then prime minister? He pulled out of the hat some obscure rule and was able to load the Senate up with extra members. He stacked the Senate with members whose only qualification was that they had enough energy to stand up when asked to vote whether they were in favour of the GST. He found eight such members, put them in the Senate and the bill was jammed through. That is not democracy.
That is why we need an elected Senate. That is why we need a Senate that truly represents the people from the provinces in which senators originate. That is long overdue. What is so totally disgusting and annoying is that the Prime Minister, who promised he would do it and could do it if he had the will, refuses to do it. That is what is disgusting. He could have simply said when the opening came up in Alberta that he would let democracy rule.
Under the current legislation he does not have the right to appoint senators. Strictly speaking that is to be done by the Governor General, but of course the Governor General is also a favourite appointee of the Prime Minister. They work together in this regard.
The Prime Minister could simply say whomever the people select is the person who will be there. I am proud to say that this coming week these elected senators will be in Ottawa. Maybe they will be observed. They will be around. We hope they will be able to get some media interviews and perhaps breathe a breath of democracy into this place that is so much in need of it.
I am going to take a little pause and have a drink of water before I get to stage two of my speech.