I hear crying and guffawing coming across the way. I would suggest to those who are real students of democracy, free votes and parliamentary procedure to check the record to see which party of all the parties in this place has the better record in allowing free votes and allowing people to speak their minds and to speak for their constituencies as opposed to their party leaders. Our record will stand up very well.
My constituents were equally torn over this issue so I went with my conscience in terms of the concerns that I heard. Being 50:50 either way for my constituents put me in a position to allow me to do that.
I cherish the fact that the Canadian Alliance, and before it the Reform Party, laid out more concrete measures than any other party in the history of the country. The Alliance talked about allowing free votes and having a formal vote of non-confidence. In that way no government could whip its own members into voting the party line to avoid the government from falling.
There should be a formal vote of non-confidence. We put that down in black and white and ran on it in election campaigns. I wish that more people had seen fit to make that the election issue because, if that were the case, the Alliance would have been the government that truly believed in democratic and representative government.
I am proud of the record the Alliance has stood on. In that way government members would be able to vote against legislation that they did not think was good enough and which needed to be reassessed. Legislation only gets better by doing something like that. It may be a horrible process to watch and engage in for those of us who are the cogs in the wheel, but nonetheless it is a valuable exercise for the people we make laws for. For that reason having free votes and a formal vote of non-confidence so the government cannot whip people on things that should not be votes of confidence provides a good record for the Alliance. That is why I did what I did.