Mr. Speaker, I really wish they would give thoughtful attention to what I am trying to say. As defenders of democracy, as they like to call themselves, they should also be speaking the same words I am now speaking.
I remember that when I was first elected in 1993 I came here and I was involved in a particular party. I brought in an amendment to a bill at committee. It was one of the first bills that went to committee before second reading. I was involved in the debate. I thought it would be great and I put forward an idea.
A clear majority of members, including those on the government side, were in favour of the amendment I proposed. One Liberal member used my name and said that I had a good idea. I cannot use my own name here. It is a stifling of freedom of speech in the House of Commons. I proceeded with the amendment to the wording of the bill and assumed that it would be accepted.
There came a day some time later when we voted on clause by clause in committee. The chairman asked “Shall clause one pass, shall clause two pass, shall clause three pass”. When it came I moved an amendment to the appropriate clause as required by procedure and the Liberal members all voted against it.
Later on I challenged them. I said “I thought you guys were on my side. I thought you agreed with the common sense of what I was trying to propose”. I would never divulge the name. Nor would I even identify the riding, which is within the rules here. The Liberal member to whom I spoke looked at me, shrugged his shoulders and said “We really don't have a choice”.
I put forward that evidence to say that the whole process is a sham. Even though the committee will do the work, and I have no doubt that it will try to do good work, the ultimate control will come from the government House leader in that committee. He will basically dictate what the final results of the bill will be.
It is surely unfortunate that I do not have a couple of hours to debate everything. I will have to hurry. I will now talk a little about the bill. My colleague has already mentioned the magnitude of Bill C-2. It is a huge bill. It has 250-some pages. There is a lot of detail in terms of prescribing how we conduct our elections. The index alone has xxii pages, and I will talk about two of them.
According to the government House leader who made a speech this morning, one of the topics covered is improving the way our elections work and of improving democracy in Canada. I want to talk about clause 39. It is important to actually put on the record what it says. I want to alert Canadians across the country from coast to coast who are sitting there glued to CPAC this morning to pay attention to what it says. There are several different positions. I cannot read them all but they all have this wording:
—the returning officer shall solicit names of suitable persons from the candidates of the registered parties whose candidates finished first and second in the last election in the electoral district, to be submitted to the returning officer—
Then it says that the candidates shall be appointed as much as possible half from the candidate's party that finished first and half from the candidate's party that finished second.
Is not Elections Canada and the work of Elections Canada impartial? Is that not what democracy is? We have right in the elections act proposed by the government an entrenchment of a practice which has been in our procedures for far too long. There is a pay off if one votes correctly. The Prime Minister will tell people in his riding to vote for him and he will be able to funnel millions of taxpayers dollars into the riding. That will be their prize for voting for him.
It is time to give Canadians free choice to vote for the candidate and the party that are principled and that represent the true values of Canadians. We should not cloud that decision by the immediate appeal of having money funnelled into the riding or getting some patronage appointments at the next election because all these positions are paid for by the Canadian taxpayer via Elections Canada.
I was surprised when I was first elected to find out that this process existed. In fact I was a brand new candidate back in 1993. I had never participated in elections before and one day I got a phone call telling me that the Reform Party came second in the 1988 election and that I now had the right to name all the deputy returning officers in the polls. I said, “That cannot be, Elections Canada is surely impartial. Just because we came second surely does not give me the right to now say that the people who voted for the Reform Party in the last election will now get a payoff, a government job”.
This was wrong and I recognized it right away even though I was inexperienced. I declined. I told the returning officer in Elk Island to choose the person who did it the last time if she or he did a good job. I also said that I did not care what party the person was with, but that if there was somebody who worked last time and did not do a good job that I would give my permission to fire them. I should have been out of the loop.
The principled Reform Party, not the one of political expedience doing anything that needs to be done to get elected but rather the one that is based on principle, says that the Reform Party supports giving Elections Canada the power to select and hire all of its own employees, including but not limited to returning officers, deputy returning officers and other field staff. We believe that the decision should be made on merit and on ability to do the job and not based on a debt to be paid because of having shown favour to one political party or another.
If I had time I would also love to talk about many other issues in Bill C-2 but of course with this process we cannot. I have only these few minutes and members cannot even ask me any questions. That is regrettable, I am sure.