Oh, there is one back there. He happens to be reading his book but he says he is listening to me. There is another one back there who is actually listening. I cannot mention his name. That is great. There are two of them. That is wonderful.
Out of 301 members of parliament, the Reform Party is trying to put forward some debate. We are trying to persuade some empty seats to come to a different point of view. What a shame.
I will say a bit about the process that is involved. We have a very strange anomaly with respect to the democratic process. It is a matter of record that the majority of seats in western Canada, the majority of seats in British Columbia, are held by Reform Party members. We in the Reform Party have undertaken a very creative initiative in politics in Canada by representing in the House of Commons the wishes of the people who elected us.
A majority of members of parliament from British Columbia are Reformers who are listening not just to the chiefs but to the grassroots people. They are getting the message both from grassroots natives and from grassroots non-natives that there are serious flaws in this process and in what is being jammed down their throats.
The democratic system is failing because of the way democracy does not work in Canada. Most Liberals on the other side of the House, most of whom are represented by green foreheads again today, do not live in British Columbia. They will rise on command and vote the way they are told to jam the legislation through even though they do not represent, by any stretch of the imagination, the people who are most vitally affected by it. I am speaking of the people of British Columbia.
I should also hasten to add that inasmuch as every deal like this one creates a precedence and a pattern for future agreements, it affects every Canadian. However the Liberals are not listening to that. They say they do not need to listen to that. They have a majority and can do whatever they want. They just thumb their noses at us and do whatever they wish.
Even though the New Democratic Party government in British Columbia held a majority of seats in that house, it obtained a lesser percentage of the votes in British Columbia than did the Liberal Party. It is intriguing the Liberal Party of British Columbia, a party with the same name as the governing party here, came to the conclusion after studying the bill and consulting with the people involved that it was not a very good bill and should be amended, changed, fixed or defeated.
Admittedly the New Democratic Party government gave it a lot more debate time in its house than we are getting here. I guess we can give the NDP a back-handed compliment for at least permitting that. However just permitting debate is meaningless.
I know my party is saying that we ought to be able to debate this bill. I am not content with that. I am not content with just standing here and talking. I would like to change the minds of the people on the other side. What can I do to force them to actually listen to me? I do not know what I can do.
Maybe we should change the rules of the House. Maybe our salaries should be contingent on us actually physically being present in the House when debates are being held. Maybe that should happen. Maybe we should do something that forces members to participate in a debate like this one.
How many speeches have we had from the disinterested green foreheads over there today? I believe we had one or two. I was at finance committee for a while so I may have missed one of those important speeches, but there is mostly indifference.
I remember reading a long time ago that the opposite of love was not hate, that the opposite of love was indifference. Members opposite are totally indifferent. They do not care. They do not raise their heads to speak. They do not talk to the people in any meaningful way. When the time comes for voting they will indifferently rise on command, collect their salaries and go home.
I am not in a position to prognosticate and predict what will happen, but I would be very surprised if the number of Liberal members from B.C. in the next election was not cut by one-half, one-third or one-fourth. I do not think that they will carry the support of the people because it is evident that they are not being represented here by those Liberal members.
We have evidence that between 60% and 90% of people in different ridings are opposed to the agreement. I will ask a simple, reasonable question. If there is such opposition to it, why can government members not exercise a shade of humility and say that perhaps they are not perfect? Just imagine if they would confess that and admit that perhaps they are not 100% perfect.
We are dealing with Bill C-9. I know I cannot use props, but I was trying to guess how thick the books were. I just felt them and they are thick, the two books we are talking about today. Surely in there somewhere we could have made a few little amendments to satisfy the deeply held concerns of British Columbians and other Canadians in this regard.
What we have is a government that says it is 100% right and there is no room for change. It feels that it does not need to consider any amendments. In fact the bill has come to the House without the possibility of amendment. We are not doing our jobs as parliamentarians if we just simply rubber stamp a flawed document. Also, the ramifications of this decision will be with us, our children and our children's children for generations. Therefore it is important that it is done correctly.
I remember one of my bosses at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology who had a parchment in his office. Every time I went to see him I would see that parchment which contained a very fitting statement: “If you don't have time to do it right, when will you find time to do it again?” That is a very good principle for how we do things. We need to do it right. In this instance it is doubly and triply important because the ability to change the agreement once it has been enacted is not very hopeful at all. It will be virtually impossible to do so.
We are rushing into it. We are not doing it well enough as parliamentarians. I should be explicit. The Liberals and other opposition parties that are standing with them in jamming the bill through are failing the Canadian people. They are failing the people of British Columbia. They are failing the natives, because even they are telling us that they have serious concerns about the legislation. They are not well served. They are not at all happy with what is happening.
In conclusion, I urge members opposite to use their own brains and their own conscience and do what is right and what is necessary in terms of the bill. For once they should use the clout available to them. They are so close to being able to put the government in a position of having to deal with it, why do they not do it? Let them show some integrity and do it.