Mr. Speaker, the member says he has been around since 1988, I have been around since 1972, and that members in the House have voted independently many more times than any other party. My colleague from North Vancouver voted for the gun bill even though he was opposed to it because that is what his constituents wanted him to do. The whip of this party has done that. That has happened in this party continually. My party believes it when it says it has free votes on this side of the House.
I am not attacking anybody's integrity. I am talking about a change. If the hon. member wants to get up and make this partisan argument, I will read some quotes from his own members.
The member from Lac-Saint-Louis, another veteran of both provincial and federal politics like myself, said that the system needs to be blown to smithereens. I agree with him, as do many of my colleagues. I spoke to him privately. I think there are at least 50 potential Guy Fawkeses in the Liberal caucus alone who would be glad to light the fuse. That was said by the member for Toronto—Danforth. If you want to do this, I will do you one for one anytime in the House. I will also do you one for one on the rules of parliament. I was a Speaker for a number of years and I know them well. I have been to London and Australia and have met most other parliamentary democracies. We are behind the times in this area.
Yes, we are elected to and support our party. The constitution of our party allows us to vote with our own conscience and that of our constituents. I respect the fact that in a matter of a confidence vote, because it was elected with a majority of members, members would vote with the government. Yes, there should be a whip. If I was a whip the members would be voting with me or they would not be there.
However, on every matter that is not a matter of confidence in the government or when we are debating bills in the House, we should all be free to say what we want to say. There are different regions in Canada where we may want to have a say on something. We should be allowed to that. We should be allowed to support different ideas and vote that way in the House. If a minister does not have a good bill, let the members send it back to be reworked. Let us get it right. That is all we are trying to say.
We can have all the partisan arguments we want but it is time for us to get a committee, get a bunch of good people in a room and start looking at the rules. We do not expect to win them all but we would certainly like to see some changes.