Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough for his comments. I always enjoy listening to his comments and as the House leader for the party I know he has a lot of interest in the whole procedural part of parliament.
It is unfortunate when the public looks on and says “I am not sure what is going on. There are a lot of green seats and there are some things flashing on the screen, but I do not know what it is all about”.
However, I believe that it is critically important today to discuss the issues of the role of parliament and the role of the opposition parties, collectively, in a properly functioning parliament.
I appreciated the comments that the member brought forward regarding the need to respect this institution and the need for people on all sides of the House, especially the government which holds the big hammer, to understand that there is a role to play. A proper functioning democracy needs an efficient opposition.
The member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough and I spoke to the Cuban delegates together some time ago. We talked about two things. I talked about the role of the opposition. I told them that we think a good government can be made better by an efficient opposition. The opposition is important in making a government more efficient and accountable; not just efficient in the sense of quickly passing legislation, but efficient in the sense of doing the right thing and representing people better. The opposition is required. I made it perfectly clear when I talked to the Cuban representatives that the opposition was important.
The member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough talked about the importance of a free media and its role in a functioning democracy. In other words, there are the people themselves, the voters, the active participants that not only vote but make their feelings known to their politicians, there is the role of the media to actively report not only what is sensational but the meat and potatoes of what goes on in this place, and there is also the role of the opposition parties. All of that is key to a properly functioning democracy.
What can be more key in that parcel that we are involved in, which is partly media and partly debate, than to have the right to speak to important issues? The public may say “This is just a debate on restricting your ability. They are going to try to wear you out by sitting until 4 o'clock in the morning”. The public should know that it is the crux of a democracy to be able to speak out in parliament when we do not agree with something. It is the quintessential essence of parliament to debate, to talk, to be able to get our points across.
This was before my time, but when the pipeline debate came to a head and the government restricted debate, what happened at that time?
The pipeline was one issue. It was a big issue. It was an important issue for the country, but what the subsequent election turned on was the use of closure. Mr. Diefenbaker made proper use of that. He said “It is not just the pipeline, it is the fact that we were not allowed to talk about it”. The election turned on that.
In my province of British Columbia, back in Dave Barrett's day, the opposition of the day, which was led by Bill Bennett, made the point that the government was not using the legislature. The legislature was not sitting. The government was bypassing it by using orders in council to pass everything, to spend millions and millions of dollars.
Mr. Bennett went around the province and his rallying cry was “Not a dime without debate”. He could not go to the legislature and cry it because it was not sitting. He went out and said to the people of that province “It is not right that the government is bypassing the legislature, bypassing parliament, and running the province by executive order. We need to have public scrutiny. We need to have public debate. We need to have the legislature sit”.
That was back in the early seventies. It was such a big issue that he won the next election because the government refused to do its job, which was to sit, to withstand the barrage of media scrutiny, to withstand the scrutiny of the opposition parties who put questions to it and to debate legislation. Because of that the Barrett government fell. It was one of many reasons, but that was the rallying cry leading up to it.
That happened about 25 years ago. In 25 years we have come so far that this government has used closure and time allocation 50 times to restrict debate on routine issues of the day. It just does not want to bother talking about them.
This is not a national pipeline debate. It is just “We don't not like the cut of your jib, so we are going to cut off debate”.
Changes are necessary. We had a debate on potential changes to the standing orders. I put forward six or eight ideas that I thought could improve this place to make it more accountable and also to limit the extreme power of the government. I wonder if the house leader of the Conservative Party could detail for us some of his ideas on standing order changes which would make this place function better.
I have dealt with things such as referral before second reading and a lot of other things, but I would be interested to know if there were some specifics that he thinks could improve this place so that the government does not only holds all the cards but play them underhandedly.