Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the New Democratic Party to say a few words on this Reform motion which calls for ending vote pairing. The motion also asks that we establish an absentee proxy voting system which would permit a party to cast properly authorized proxy votes of no more than 25% of its members.
As a member of the House of Commons, I am as open and embracing of new ideas as are most members in this House regardless of their party. I am always anxious to hear new ideas particularly from my colleagues in this House.
However, I do not want to give the impression that I support this motion because it has some very interesting implications. I agree with the member for Peterborough. He said that with proxy voting, members voting from a distance on issues, on amendments to acts and amendments to motions and bills would be hard pressed to know what they were voting on.
As whip of the New Democratic Party and someone who has been a member of this House for over four years, I can share the following with my colleagues. Even when members of all parties have been in the House full time during the week and have paid attention to the debates, the amendments, the motions and the committee work, they sometimes still do not have a clue what they are voting on unless their whips tell them to their faces what it is they are voting on. Sometimes there are 20 or 30 votes in the matter of an hour and a half in the House.
It is up to the leadership of the caucuses to make the decisions in co-operation with their caucuses and to advise others who were not at the meetings of how their caucus is going to vote or how their individual members might want to vote if they wish to have an independent vote from the caucus.
This proposal would further weaken and diminish the authority of the member of Parliament. It would certainly weaken and diminish the authority with which a member would be voting. I flag that issue.
I am quite surprised with the Reformers. They talk about democracy. Reform members should learn the meaning of parler, or Parliament which is a derivative of parler. It means to speak. We come as representatives of the thousands of people in our constituencies to speak in the House of Commons in Ottawa on behalf of our constituents. We are here to parler, to speak on behalf of our constituents on issues that are important to them. Voting happens to be one of the responsibilities of a member of Parliament after giving speeches or listening to the debates.
I am surprised that Reformers would want to promote democracy and the opportunity for members to have free votes while they say that the House of Commons is not important to them, that they will go back to their ridings and visit with whomever they want and not come to Ottawa to at least earn their paycheques. That diminishes democracy. It diminishes Parliament. It certainly blows into shreds their argument that they believe in democracy. Time after time the evidence shows that they believe in the contrary. The record should clearly show that.
If Reformers want to stay home in their ridings to vote, they should resign from Parliament and run for office in municipal or provincial government. They could stay in their cities, their towns or their villages or their rural areas in their provinces and they would not have to worry about coming to Ottawa. They have options if they do not like coming here. They can resign or they do not have to run next time, which I think is the option preferred by millions of Canadians for Reform members who believe in this sort of anti-democratic move.
This is just another example of the Reform Party wanting less government. Reformers do not have a great deal of respect for the institution of government. They do not believe that government works. They say to everybody in this country “Vote for me and I will prove to you that government does not work”.
In Saskatchewan we have had the evidence of the Reform Party proving to Saskatchewan people that Reform policies do not work. In 1982 a Reform style politician, Grant Devine, said the same thing as this Reform member is saying today, that they do not want to have involvement in government. “Government does not work. You vote for us, Saskatchewan people, and we will prove to you that government does not work”.
Saskatchewan people were tricked and they voted for this Reform style politician, Grant Devine. He had 10 consecutive deficit budgets in nine years. He went from a zero debt to $16 billion in debt for the one million people in the province of Saskatchewan.
Twelve of his colleagues in that government have been charged and most of them have been found guilty for criminal acts while members of the legislature. That is the Reform style kind of government.
Reformers promise less government. They say they believe in more democracy and of course they end up giving all the assets away in the objective of less government to all their friends who then take away the assets and leave the debt with the people of Saskatchewan. I am kind of surprised at this motion and why the they would promote this.
My very major concern in the New Democratic Party is that technically this motion is preceding ongoing meetings and ongoing decisions being considered by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs that the member for Peterborough ably chairs.
We are discussing the very nature of modernizing parliaments. We are looking at electronic voting and all sorts of things that would modernize our system. While modernizing, we are not looking at diminishing democracy or the role of members of Parliament. We are actually looking at enhancing the role of Parliament and making sure that Canadians have a voice in this assembly regardless of their being in Ottawa or not.
My final words are that the Reform Party also surprised me with the fact that it wants to let the government off the hook. For the record, the NDP has never supported officially the pairing of votes. To this day we continue not to support that.
We believe that if elected, members should be here, be accountable and be responsible and should be on duty like many of my colleagues here today on a Friday afternoon. I give them all credit for being here. It is an honourable thing and a very important thing to be doing.
I am surprised because the Reform Party, whose members want to hold the government accountable, now wants to allow 25% of the Liberal MPs not even to be here to ask questions. I do not think that defines democracy or more accountability.
What Reformers are doing is encouraging the stampede away from the House of Commons. They are encouraging the authority of the House of Commons to be so watered down that members may as well not come to Ottawa to vote. They may as well all vote by proxy from their various constituencies.
I am not sure if I oppose this but the arguments that I put forward I think persuade me that this recommendation by the Reform Party member is not well thought out. It is anti-democratic. It reduces the effectiveness of the House of Commons and really is another effort by the Reform Party, very supportive of Liberal policies, to provide the Liberal government with yet one more opportunity to avoid being accountable, responsible and answerable to the people of Canada.