Madam Speaker, I am delighted to follow the remarks of the member for Mississauga Centre. I too intend to speak on private members' business and I endorse many of the recommendations she made.
I begin by referring to the remarks of the member for Calgary Southwest in his speech a little earlier in this debate. He suggested that the government side could very easily have free votes. His proposal was that individual backbench MPs should always examine legislation and vote exactly according to their evaluation of that legislation and that it should not be a show of lack of confidence in the government.
The problem with that, as the member for Calgary Southwest should know, is that each one of us in the backbench does not have the resources of the government in examining all the legislation the government must put forward. We also have commitments to our ridings. We have commitments and interests and specializations.
No individual backbencher on the government side or on the opposition side for that matter can possibly hope to examine every bit of legislation with the kind of due diligence that is necessary to always vote independently. We have to trust our leadership. I do note on the other side that the opposition MPs also usually trust their leadership and vote with their leadership.
That is not to say however that there is not a need for more independence to be shown on behalf of backbench MPs. I think the solution for that is in improvements in private members' legislation.
One of the problems is that our role as backbench MPs is not seen very clearly by the public. What we actually do is work in committee. We adjust legislation in committee.
Members on the opposition side, and fortunately I am not on the opposition side, but the opposition MPs by their criticisms contribute in a major way to the progress of legislation. Their criticisms enable backbench government members to arm themselves in caucus to push the government in the direction they want to go.
For example, the fact that the Reform Party came to parliament in 1993 in such strength certainly gave some backing to those of us in the Liberal caucus who are fiscal conservatives and wanted to push the Minister of Finance in the direction of cutting back spending and bringing down the deficit. Now there are more members of the New Democratic Party. This gives, shall we say, ammunition to those members in the Liberal caucus who want to push the government in the direction of more social spending.
The opposition makes very important contributions to the progress of policy and legislation in the House. The problem is that the public does not see this. Some opposition members from time to time feel a sense of frustration, as we do occasionally in the backbench when we are not recognized for the efforts we make in committee.
We saw an example yesterday in the opposition benches. A member was terribly frustrated by not getting the attention he felt he deserved. I am referring to the member for Lac-Saint-Jean who felt it was necessary to take his seat out to the lobby before the press in order to get attention. I submit that this was extremely juvenile and a great disrespect to the rest of the MPs who do feel that we are contributing but do not have to pull pranks for the media.
That aside, what can we do as backbench MPs to make the public see that we do have an important role in this House, a role that they can see on a daily if not weekly basis? The solution is in private members' business. We have to expand the opportunities of meaningful private members' business in this House certainly to the extent that the member for Mississauga Centre mentioned but even more so.
There is a great opportunity for private members to engage in amending existing government legislation. One of the problems now in parliament is that when the government enacts legislation it does not come up for review again for approximately 10 years. This is a formula which exists. It is a tradition in this parliament.
The reason is that governments feel there would be a lack of confidence in the government if once the law was passed and went out and was tested in the field, in Canadian society it was found to be inadequate in certain ways. Past governments have been very reluctant to return to the legislation to make the adjustments that would make that law better.
We as parliamentarians cannot anticipate all the problems of legislation when we pass it. When legislation gets out into the community there are inconsistencies. Examples are the tobacco bill, the gun bill and the competition bill. The competition bill is 10 years old and we are only revisiting it now with amendments in Bill C-20.
Private members could play a vital and important role in the legislative life of this House and this nation by doing more to amend existing legislation, to fix it up and make it work better in society. For example the notorious gun bill did go through but is not working. We as members and the government should not be afraid if members on all sides of the House introduce an amendment to the gun bill and support that change. I would propose that we look in that direction to give backbench MPs a more meaningful role.
I would also suggest that we do good service to improve private members' business to take the monopoly of writing legislation away from the Department of Justice. Almost all meaningful legislation that comes into this House is written by the Department of Justice. It is not that the department does a bad job in general but the job is sometimes inconsistent. It is the old story that if there is no competition in an endeavour then the quality of the product deteriorates. If we had better and more meaningful bills coming from private members through the legislative counsel rather than through the justice department maybe we would get an overall improvement in the quality of legislation that actually comes before this House.
How do we do this? The member for Mississauga Centre made one very good suggestion. This is a recommendation of the subcommittee of which she was the chair. She indicated that we ought to have a system whereby if an individual member has a very good bill and the member can obtain the support of 100 seconders on all sides of the House including the opposition benches, that bill should jump the lottery and should get on the order of precedence.
That is a way of getting quality bills introduced in the House by private members. It is a very good suggestion. I hope that the report which contains that recommendation is tabled by the government and I hope the government will show a certain amount of sympathy for doing so.
We also have to make more time for meaningful Private Members' Business. It is difficult to extend the hours of the House. I would suggest that we do away with private members' motions.
Private members' motions do not accomplish anything in the House and we all know it. It is an opportunity for partisan point scoring by the opposition. That is fine and so it should be. Sometimes it is an opportunity for partisan point scoring by members on the government backbenches. The reality is that private members' motions do not commit the government to do anything. It is a charade. I recommend very strongly that private members' motions be set aside in favour of more private members' bills. That is what we want.
There is one flaw in this scenario. It goes back to what the member for Calgary Southwest said. If we give this kind of initiative to backbench MPs will they use it wisely? Will backbench MPs on all sides of the House debate private members' legislation intelligently, coherently and with due diligence? We are all human on both sides of the House and sometimes we do not do our homework. One of the problems of giving a lot more power to private members to create legislation is that occasionally bad bills will slip through.
We have a new role for the Senate. The Senate is dying to have something more useful to do. If we improve the quality of legislation that comes from Private Members' Business and make it meaningful, the Senate will have the time to give it due diligence scrutiny. It would be a new role for the Senate. There would be more public confidence in the Senate. Improving private members' bills would improve public confidence in backbench MPs and in the Senate.