Debates of Feb. 27th, 2001

Canada Elections Act

[Bev Desjarlais, NDP, Churchill, MB]

moved that Bill C-213, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today to begin the debate on my private member's bill to enfranchise 16 and 17 year old Canadians. As many members of the House will know, the bill was originally introduced in the last parliament by our former colleague, Nelson Riis, who represented the people of Kamloops, Fraser and Highland Valleys and the surrounding area very well for the last 20 years.

Nelson Riis was an MP who was respected on all sides of the House for his insight, his strong grasp of the issues, his mastery of parliamentary procedures, his flair for the dramatic and, most of all, his unwavering commitment to serving both his own constituents and all Canadians. His legacy of service to the country through his work in the House is one that few parliamentarians can ever hope to match.

I am pleased to have been able to pick up the bill introduced in the last parliament by Mr. Riis and lead off the debate today in the House of Commons. I admit that when Nelson first talked about the bill and introduced it I was quite skeptical. I wondered whether 16 year olds were mature enough to vote. Therefore I understand if members taking part in the debate today are also skeptical.

After carefully looking into the matter and speaking with literally hundreds of young adults in my riding, I am convinced that enfranchising 16 and 17 year old Canadians would reinvigorate and strengthen democracy in Canada. Right now Canadian democracy needs a shot in the arm. Voter turnout in the last election was down to 58%. That is the lowest in the modern era. More than four out of ten Canadians stayed home rather than exercise their right to vote.

How would enfranchising 16 and 17 year olds improve voter turnout? Some people say it would actually lower voter turnout, which is already lowest among voters between the ages of 18 and 25. That argument only scratches the surface of the issue. If we look carefully at voting behaviour we see that exercising citizenship through voting, like many life values, is something most Canadians learn from their families at a young age.

Statistically speaking, we are more likely to vote if our parents vote than if they do not. People who vote do so because they value their rights and responsibilities as citizens in a democracy. Values like this are most often learned in the home.

The problem with setting the voting age at 18 is that by the time young Canadians are old enough to vote, which may be 19 or 20 depending on the electoral cycle, they have already left home. By that age most young adults have either gone away to pursue post-secondary education or, if they are fortunate, they have found a job and moved out. We do not do this with most other things.

Most young adults get their first part time job while they still live at home. When young adults get their first job it is usually their parents who teach them about important life values such as the work ethic. Even if young adults do not get part time jobs, parents often teach them about the work ethic by making sure they do their homework or giving them chores to do around the house in exchange for an allowance.

The point is that most young adults learn their important life values before they leave home and begin living as independent adults. Parents are most often the ones who teach about the work ethic, the sense of right and wrong, and even things like how to drive or fold clothes. By the time young adults leave home we expect them to have all the tools they need to be able to live and function in society, with one exception: voting.

It does not make sense that we expect young adults to learn other life skills and values at home but not voting. We make them wait until an age when most have already left home before allowing them to exercise their right to vote. No wonder there is such a drop off in voting among young people. Even young adults whose parents do vote are less likely to vote than their parents.

The biggest tragedy of all is that if people do not vote when they are young they probably never will. They do not magically become interested in politics when they turn 30. Most remain non-voters their whole lives. That is why we have had a steady downward trend in voter turnout for decades.

There is no question that all of us as parliamentarians should seek a way to improve it. Canadian citizens do not appear to have faith in our system. One of the major factors, quite frankly, is that they do not trust politicians.

A few years back there was a study done. The most trusted professionals were nurses. The least trusted professionals were lawyers. The second least trusted were politicians. That should tell us there is a problem out there. We as parliamentarians must work very hard to improve that image whether or not it is justified. We must work and do whatever we can to restore people's faith in the democratic system. Otherwise we risk losing democracy, something we as Canadians have valued for a hundred years plus.

Enfranchising 16 and 17 year olds would go a long way toward stopping the downward trend. Most young adults would have their first opportunity to vote while they were still at home. It would give families a chance to talk about politics. Young adults would have a chance to learn from their parents about the values of citizenship and voting, just as they learned other life values from their parents. Instilling such values would make young adults voters for life.

This would encourage parents who at present do not vote to have an additional interest in it if their young adults are home with them and asking what is happening in an election. It would encourage that kind of discussion in the home. Maybe we could get some of those parents and older adults once again to be part of the electoral system. Extending the franchise to 16 and 17 year olds would also have positive side effects for parents.

With voter turnout in Canada down to 58%, many parents are obviously non-voters and therefore would not be teaching their sons and daughters the values of citizenship and voting. Many young adults could still learn about voting by talking to other mentors like teachers, or even their friends at school.

I have been increasingly surprised at the well informed discussions I hear from young adults in the schools in my riding. Seeing their sons and daughters become engaged in politics would, I truly believe, influence many parents who would otherwise not vote to get involved once again.

I have addressed how enfranchising 16 and 17 year olds would help invigorate democracy. That is the main positive outcome of the proposal. I will now turn my attention to the main criticism of the idea, namely the view that 16 and 17 year olds are not mature enough to vote. When I talk to older people about the issue that is the main criticism I hear. In my experience nothing could be further from the truth.

As a member of parliament I make a point of visiting schools throughout my riding. I always make myself available to go in and talk to school classes or assemblies about the job of an MP and about the Canadian parliamentary system in general. I work extremely hard within the school system to be non-partisan. There has been no criticism from teachers, parents, school trustees or anyone about it because it is a matter of getting young people involved in the political process.

I have talked to many classes since I was first elected in 1997. Most of those young adults are no less intelligent or mature than 18 or 19 year olds. Very often the political discussions I have had with high school classes I visit are just as intense as the ones on the doorsteps, on the main streets or in the chambers of commerce.

The issues we discuss may be different but they are no less important. Many young adults are interested in issues with which we deal as members of parliament that affect them directly. Young adults have a vested interest in the skyrocketing cost of post-secondary education or in the economy as they look for their first jobs and think about their future careers.

They are interested in what happens when they go into the workplace. It may not be a safe workplace. We hear year after year of the increase in the number of accidents and deaths of young people in the workplace. It is crucial that they be allowed the opportunity to be part of the legislative process in laws that affect them and in health and safety regulations which affect them.

One recent accident in particular still sits in my mind. A 14 year old construction worker in Alberta was killed on the job and charges have been laid against the employer. I can tell the House that the 14 year old did not have an opportunity to be involved in the discussion of workplace safety.

Young adults have been affected very negatively by the Liberal government's cuts to colleges and universities, by cuts to employment insurance and by the overall mismanagement of the economy. Every day the government makes decisions without the slightest consideration for young adults, even though many of them have jobs and contribute to society both as citizens and as taxpayers. It is as though they do not exist until they turn 18, and that is not right. They deserve to be heard.

Another issue that affects young adults directly is the Young Offenders Act. Right now the government is talking about changing the Young Offenders Act to make it easier to put 16 year olds in adult court. If parliamentarians and the government feel that 16 year olds should be treated like adults by the criminal justice system, then they should also be treated like adults in the electoral system.

I conclude my remarks by noting that I am glad the issue has finally made it to the floor of the House of Commons for debate. It is unfortunate that the bill was not deemed votable but at least we had the opportunity to debate the issue.

Changing the electoral system is not an easy thing to do. A hundred years ago women did not have the right to vote in Canada. It took many years of persistent effort for women to win that right. It took even longer for aboriginal people to win the right to vote. They were not enfranchised until just 40 years ago.

A few other democracies around the world have already enfranchised 16 and 17 year olds. Most are newer developing democracies like Nicaragua and some of the former Yugoslav republics. The newer democracies started off with a clean slate so it was easier for them to set the voting age at whatever seemed appropriate.

In Canada we have more historical baggage. People are used to the voting age being 18 and there is an understandable reluctance to change it. I believe in the saying “If it ain't broke, don't fix it”, but the fact is that our electoral system is broken. It is obvious from the fact that 42% of Canadians do not vote any more. We need to fix it, and enfranchising 16 and 17 year olds is one of the ways we can do that.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to have the opportunity to speak on the private member's initiative just described by the hon. member. The bill would lower the federal voting age to 16.

This is a special pleasure since all of us in the House share the same commitment to making sure all Canadians can participate fully in our electoral system and express their views on issues of the day. This is particularly true of our young people who are, after all, the very future of our country.

For that reason, I want to commend the hon. member for her concern for Canadian young people and for her commitment to safeguarding their democratic rights, a commitment shared fully by the government and, I am sure, by every member in the House.

I must confess that there is something very appealing about the idea of expanding the franchise to allow more young people to vote. As we all know, our youth care passionately about Canada and are committed to making it even better. That is demonstrated by the number of young people who get involved in the political life of the country both during and between elections. Like other members, I have been very impressed by their hard work, commitment and dedication to our great country, and I agree that we need to look at how we can involve young Canadians more in our political system.

However, as the saying goes, the devil may be in the details. We need to take a closer look at this to see what problems there might be in lowering the voting age and whether or not it is the right time for such a move.

It is important to note that the bill, while a leading initiative, does not open new ground. Canadian parliamentarians have revisited this issue many times over the last two decades, and just recently, as the member mentioned, on a bill brought forward by a former parliamentarian, Mr. Riis. For example, parliament lowered the minimum voting age to 18 in 1970.

In 1991 the Lortie commission on electoral reform and party financing investigated at some length whether we should drop the minimum voting age to 16 or 17. While it heard from a number of witnesses who presented strong cases for lowering the minimum voting age, it was also given equally compelling reasons for maintaining the status quo, such as the following: persons under the age of 18 were not considered adults for the purpose of criminal proceedings but were instead treated procedurally separately under the Young Offenders Act; minors required parental consent for many important decisions such as applying for citizenship, getting married and seeking some medical procedures; and all provinces had set the voting age at 18.

It was desirable to look to harmonization of the voting ages in all jurisdictions. Based on these findings, the commission decided not to recommend lowering the voting age but rather suggested that parliament might wish to revisit this issue from time to time. That is what we are doing now. If we do not make a move now, I am quite sure we will continue to study the issue.

An all party committee studied the issue in June 1998 and recommended retaining the current minimum voting age. There was also a re-examination of the issue last year as part of the parliamentary review of the Canada Elections Act, however cursory that may have been, which kept the voting age at 18. Finally, lowering the voting age has been the subject of a number of private members' motions, all of which have up to now been rejected.

The remarkable consistency of members in the House over time on this issue is not surprising, subject of course to the various initiatives such as the hon. member's bill at this time. There are a number of good reasons for retaining the current minimum voting age for the time being. To begin with, there is the experience of the vast majority of democratic societies around the world which have in most cases set 18 as their voting age and do not feel under pressure to change it.

Canadian experience suggests that retaining 18 as the voting age makes sense as well, given the important role played by the age of majority in most areas of law. For example, most provinces tie the voting age to the age of majority, the age of majority being a condition for all civil and legal activities and responsibilities.

The criminal code relies under certain circumstances on the age of 18 by providing specific rules where persons under that age are involved. Most social legislation takes into account the age of majority in terms of the granting of aid or social assistance. In most cases family allowances are paid for the support of young people up to age 18.

Many economic statutes make reference to the age of majority, as well, particularly those relating to business corporations which require persons to be 18 before they can be elected to boards of directors. Most legislation dealing with alcohol use is also tied in many but not all cases to the age of majority.

This being the case it makes a great deal of sense to maintain for consistency 18 years of age as the age when our federal electoral law might permit one to vote. This ensures harmonization and consistency across our very diverse country. Maintaining just one age of majority in all areas of law helps prevent overcategorization and segmentation of our civil rights by age and increases the certainty for Canadians on this issue as they move from one part of the country to another.

However this is not to suggest that the minimum voting age as it is now is set in stone for all time and can never be changed. Rather, because Canada is so dynamic, our system of governance of electoral laws must also change from time to time to correspond to the needs of all its citizens as they may reflect changing social, economic and cultural realities.

Should it become clear in the future by way of an emerging consensus that we need to reduce the minimum age due to changed circumstances, I for one would consider endorsing and supporting such an action.

I do look for an emerging consensus. It may be that members are on the edge of a wave here. We do not know, but barring such clear evidence we must continue to rely on the recommendations and insights of the previous royal and parliamentary commissions which have told us that the time for lowering the age has not yet arrived.

While I cannot support the bill, I nevertheless commend the hon. member for being the flag bearer for potentially a whole generation of young people, a rolling over, evolving generation of young people, all of whom are old enough to think, to reason, and to know right from wrong. Most people will accept that 16 year olds are capable of those things. All members see that our education system has helped us greatly in that regard.

The member's commitment and the commitment of other members of the House as reflected in this and other debates will show that. I urge all hon. members to continue to work together, not only in this envelope but in all of the envelopes involving our election rights and responsibilities, to ensure that our electoral system continues to do the best job we can possibly do of enabling representation of Canadians.

[Keith Martin, Canadian Alliance, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-213. I compliment my friend from the NDP for putting it forward.

She addressed something that is extremely important, not only to the youth of the country but to adults: why we as a nation are disengaged from the political process in appalling numbers. We went through a federal election last November where we saw the lowest voter turnout in the last 60 years. Less than 60% of Canadians voted in the federal election.

Why is that so? Canadians are not only apathetic and disaffected but are utterly turned off by the political process in the House and in the country today for some very good reasons. The reason that is so is that we do not live in a democracy.

We live in a totalitarian regime. The system is controlled by a Prime Minister and a small cabal of individuals who are unelected, unaccountable and invisible. They tell members what to do, what to say and when to say it. Lo and behold the member who goes against them. It is a top down situation. Members vote as they are told to do, not what their conscience or their constituents tell them to do.

The committee structure is under tight government control and that is why they start pursuing efforts and initiatives that have very little to do with the large pressing problems of the nation today. They deal with irrelevancies because committees and most of the House are designed to be a make work project for MPs, not to address the big problems that exist in the country today.

To understand why members vote this way, it is interesting to look at an unwritten code of conduct in the House which explains to Canadians why they see members voting clearly against their conscience, clearly against what they want to do and in violation of what is the right thing to do.

It goes something like this: do what the leadership tells them to do. It is also known as the principle of blind loyalty. If information comes to them from outside sources that is adverse to what the leadership says, they must be ignored at all cost, even if it goes against what the leadership says and the external information is true. If their personal ethics and knowledge are against what the leadership tells them to do, they must ignore that. It creates an internal schizophrenic environment in the brain that prevents them from doing the right thing and is very difficult to live with.

Zealotry is rewarded; objectivity is penalized. The consequences for living up to what their constituents want them to do, what they feel is ethically responsible or intellectually responsible, where it runs adverse to what the leadership wants to do, is to be excommunicated from their party, have their democratic rights compromised, have their ability to represent their constituents severely restricted and be rendered politically impotent.

Indeed the landscape is littered with the political corpses of individuals who have run afoul of their leadership and have done the right thing. The system is weak. It lends to the political disaffection and the disconnectiveness that Canadians have for the House of Commons.

What should we do? Many members of the House have fought for constructive democratic solutions to make this place a responsible place for Canadians. We hear about free votes, but do we have them? Absolutely not. I am talking about true free votes for non-money bills. We need them for members of all political parties.

Why not have all bills go in draft form to committees? If bills went in draft form to committees then both the MPs and the public would have constructive input into forming bills. Right now committees basically rubber stamp the bills that come forward which are already constructed by the Prime Minister's Office and the department. They come from the department and go through the sham of engaging in an analysis.

It breaks my heart, as I am sure it does of every member of the House, to see well meaning, intelligent public individuals come before committees with bright and intelligent solutions to deal with problems they are studying. Yet that input is largely ignored. It is certainly ignored by the leaders of the country.

A committee report is put forward. It gets a day of press and then is tossed on a shelf to collect dust in some unknown hideaway. That is what happens to all the hard work of committee members.

Committees must be independent. Parliamentary secretaries should be removed from committees. They do not belong there. They are acting as mini whips of the government. They greatly impede the ability of committees to do their work. Committees should be independent in order to do effective work that benefits Canadians.

Private members' business should be expanded by three hours a week. We could have two more hours on Friday and one more hour on Monday. The system upon which private members' business is chosen should be changed. Right now it is a lottery. Every MP must have one votable private member's bill and one private member's motion at a minimum every parliament.

There is a need for more constructive debates and less destructive action on the part of the government. Presently the government rolls itself up in a carapace and the opposition parties hammer away at it, often on issues that the public does not care about.

Why are we not seeing any effective debate on how to save our health care system? Why are we not seeing a debate on the demographic impact on Canadian society, from pensions to social programs? We have unsustainable pensions, an unsustainable health care system and an unsustainable CPP. Our environment is being polluted. There are solutions out there to address it, yet we see no effective action to deal with these and many other problems.

Why is that so? The reason is that this place has nothing to do with being constructive in addressing the problems of the nation but has everything to do with the maintenance and acquisition of power. It is true that one has to get into power to implement what one wants to have done, but that does not preclude the ability of each and every member of the House to use their talents and their skills to represent their constituents for the betterment of Canada.

We need to create an environment in the House that will enable the big issues of the country to be addressed. We need to create awareness to address the issue the member has raised in her bill. When we speak to the public and the young it is sad that they know very little about the big issues affecting our country.

The government could work with the provinces to introduce a civics course starting in grade school. It is easier to hardwire people when they are younger. They need to be hardwired about being involved and connected with their environment. A civics course in school would enable students to be aware of what is happening in their environment and to get involved in their environment. Then when they are older they would have a greater propensity and a greater desire to get involved in the processes, be they political or otherwise.

There is a massive dearth in the interactivity of our processes with the Canadian public. We have to regenerate that. The only way we can do that is to ensure that the House is democratic so that what people are saying will be listened to and acted on.

Second, we have to ensure that our youth today are aware of what is happening. One way we can do it, and indeed the government should do it, is to work with the provinces to introduce a civics course into the schools across this country, starting with children at a very early age. That way we will create generations of children who will become the adult leaders who will address the problems of our nation.

I have only a minute left, but I again thank the hon. member, and I issue a plea to the government. This is not an issue that affects only members in the opposition. This affects every single member in the House of Commons, across all party lines. If we fail to democratize the House and if we fail to enable the public to have adequate input through their MPs and through the systems of the House, we do not deserve to be here and the House does not deserve to have a higher reputation than it has.

Listen to what has been said in this place over the years and act on it, and we will be able to do our country proud.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased as well to intervene on this bill as introduced by our colleague from Churchill.

I take this opportunity to congratulate her. I think it is laudable to put this proposal before the House to enable our young people aged 16 and 17 to vote.

However, the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader has indicated that this is not the first time this matter has been debated here. We have to raise this question again periodically and debate it from time to time simply because there a number of rather conservative forces that are not particularly open to considering this reform, the effect of which would be to allow our 16 and 17 year olds to take part in the electoral process, but are also more or less open, I would say they are in fact totally opposed, to the in depth reform of the current electoral system, which, it may be said in passing, gives them considerable advantage.

Is it not odd when we had to tell our Liberal friends that they were being conservative in electoral terms, because the system in its current form benefits them? This is why they do not want to change it one iota, since there is no reason for them to change it in any way in the short term.

Members need only remember the remarks by the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader to the effect that, when the House worked on the reform to the Elections Act in the last parliament, the committee, the House and the government chose to reject the idea of giving the vote to 16 and 17 year olds. He said they had had rejected it. He said that, given the wisdom of our predecessors in the previous parliament, we should not reopen this issue, since we have just discussed it and have made a decision.

That being said, I would like to set the record straight and explain what truly happened. I was a member of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs when it reviewed Bill C-2. The government used its majority in committee to reject the motion in amendment that had been proposed by the New Democratic Party to introduce an amendment to the Elections Act that would have allowed 16 and 17 year olds to vote.

It is inaccurate and somewhat dishonest to suggest to members of the House and to those 16 and 17 year olds who may be listening to us that, in the last parliament, this assembly decided, in its great wisdom, to close the matter, to not follow up on that suggestion. The government decided not to go ahead with that proposal. One wonders about what motivates this government.

To all intents and purposes, the government made cosmetic changes to the Elections Act. In fact, some changes were useful ones, but there was no in depth reform of the electoral system that governs democracy in Canada.

For example, given the recommendation of the Lortie commission and of the chief electoral officer, the government could have changed the appointment process for returning officers. The government always wants control over the appointment of returning officers. Why is that? Why choose them according to their political loyalties instead of their real and proven abilities? It seems that the government wants to be the one making the appointments in the hopes of gaining some advantage.

The government has also refused to look at the entire issue of reviewing political party funding. We in the Bloc Quebecois—and I know that the NDP is also looking at this at the present time—have proposed introduction of party funding by the public, based on two basic premises, the first one being a set upper limit for allowable contributions. The government said no to that.

The second addressed limiting contributions to only those who have a say in the political system, i.e. the voters, those who select the people who will represent the population in Parliament. The government also said no to that. We must conclude that the present funding system works in their favour and here too they do not want to see one iota of it changed.

Now I am getting to the heart of what concerns us at this time. I believe that the idea that we should give the right to vote to our fellow citizens aged 16 and 17 merits consideration. More than that, it merits adoption.

Unfortunately, as fate would have it, according to the decision by the subcommittee on private members' business, this bill was judged not to be a votable item. For now, we can hardly go any further, since the government obviously has no intention of introducing such a provision in its own legislation, but at least the debate is continuing. The debate is continuing and we think that we will eventually be able to get things to evolve to the point where such a measure could be contemplated.

It would be only normal, in a society in which a 16 year old can hold a driver's licence, work, and therefore pay taxes. Under the principle of no taxation without representation, we should be able to let 16 and 17 year olds decide who will spend their tax dollars, since they have the right to work and pay taxes at that age.

Under the criminal code as it now stands, 16 and 17 year olds are considered adults. What is more, the National Defence Act allows the Canadian forces to hire 17 year olds. A youth of 17, who has not reached the age of majority, could be called, if he wished, to serve under the flag and even fight to defend Canada, putting his life on the line, but we do not want to give this 17 year old the right to choose who will represent him here in the House, who will be called upon to direct the destiny of the country for which he is prepared to risk his life.

On the very face of it, this idea of not allowing 16 and 17 year olds the right to vote is silly.

We were concerned here in the House. The chief electoral officer and civil society in general were concerned by the declining turnout in federal elections. Turnout in the last election was the lowest in Canada's electoral history.

Why? Why is this so? Perhaps it is simply because we are telling these young people in the flower of youth, who are interested in the public events, who have become independent thinkers and who would like to take part in the electoral process, that they must wait longer. They must wait another two years. They must wait another year.

What happens at the end of this year or two we have made them wait? We make them hang around at the door, telling them they still do not have what it takes, that they are not mature enough. We tell them that they have not developed sufficiently structured thought to enable them to choose judiciously on election day.

Clearly that makes no sense. This is the effect of deliberately keeping 16 and 17 year olds out of the electoral process.

As I am running out of time, I will conclude very quickly by saying that this question deserves further attention and that we should not, as the government has done for the past few years, silence this reform of the Elections Act, as with all the other proposed reforms of the Elections Act. If the government agreed to consider reforms, perhaps we could increase people's interest in public affairs.

[Bev Desjarlais, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Madam Speaker, this is actually the first opportunity I have to congratulate you on your appointment. I know that it took a number of years before the male dominated Parliament of Canada saw fit to put a female Speaker in the chair.

I want to thank all my colleagues who were involved in the debate today for the varying perspectives they brought to it. Just as it took a long time to have a woman in the Speaker's chair, it took a long time to give the vote to females and to aboriginal Canadians.

As my colleague from the Bloc mentioned, young men and women of 17 years old, young adults, can go off to war and possibly give their lives for our country, but they do not have the opportunity to vote.

Many Canadians do not know that this is exactly what aboriginal Canadians did for a number of years and through a number of wars. They gave their lives or lost their legs or arms and came back to our country disabled. They could not vote, they could not access some of the same establishments and they did not get the same rights as other veterans.

Canada is not apart from being an unjust society. We have a history there. I think we need to move beyond that history, open up the initiative and once again build a truly democratic, just society.

Canadians do not have faith in this parliamentary system any more. They do not have faith in our electoral process. We need to work very hard as parliamentarians to again build that trust in our system. It cannot be a matter of saying one thing prior to an election and then coming to the House of Commons as government or opposition members and not being true to what we were saying out there during an election. We have to maintain a democratic system and we must build that faith in our system again.

Ideally the government should be bringing forth this legislation. Then we would not have to go through the whole process of private members' business, hoping for the luck of the draw and then hoping beyond hope that our legislation will be deemed votable. We should not have to be in that situation.

The legislation would be good, progressive legislative and electoral change, and it should be coming from the government, like so many pieces of legislation that the government should be bringing forth to improve our country. It will not do that, so we will.

As opposition members we will push, and I know there are some government members out there who will push. They will take the government kicking and screaming into the next century, and hopefully we will see some change and some improvement in people's faith in our democratic system.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

The time provided for the consideration of private members' business has now expired. As the motion has not been designated a votable item, the order is dropped from the order paper.

The House resumed consideration of the motion and of the amendment.

Standing Orders

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Madam Speaker, first, I take this opportunity to congratulate you on your appointment. You have been doing a wonderful job.

Before private members' business, I was talking about the institution of parliament, the respect for the debating procedure and how legislation is debated and decisions are reached.

Members of the House have traditionally sought to improve the debating procedure of parliament and to increase the dignity of the institution in the eyes of Canadians. Sadly, we have not always proved equal to this challenge. In recent years, some believe there have been early and worrying signs that some Canadians do not always hold the institution of parliament in the same high esteem that they once did.

While some of that may be a result of general suspicion of all institutions, some responsibility for this disillusionment may lie closer to home. For example, from time to time some of the debating actions and statements of some members of the House can fuel the disillusionment and cynicism felt by Canadians. Sometimes this is a result of a misunderstanding by the public of how parliament, with its notion of loyal opposition, works.

I still do not understand all the procedures in that huge manual. I hope I will understand them better and make sense out of some of the things that I would see as a member of public watching television.

At other times some believe it is little more than a matter of high spirits and good natured bantering on the part of some members and perhaps a reflection of the collegiality which permeates the history of this and other similar institutions. However, on other occasions there are incidents which are less positive and which suggest that some procedures in the House may be dysfunctional and no longer work as had been originally intended. I have noted a special sensitivity to these incidents by new members such as myself.

In this regard we need to look further than the use in recent years of the report stage to put forward hundreds, and even thousands of motions, in the hopes of paralyzing the work of the House.

Just a brief review of recent history gives a number of glaring examples of the misuse of this stage in the legislative process.

For example, in December 1999, the House spent more than 42 consecutive hours voting on 469 report stage motions designed to delay to the work of the House on the Nisga'a legislation.

In March 2000 there was a similar exercise involving 36 consecutive hours of voting on 411 motions on the clarity bill

In September 2000, the House was faced with the prospect of having to deal with over 3,000 motions which would have required more than two weeks of non-stop sitting on the youth justice bill. Can anyone in opposition explain how this would have been useful? After all the years of study, suggestions, expert witnesses and procedures to come up with the best compromise and some improvements, how could 3,000 nuisance motions be beneficial? Clearly this would have been an abuse of parliamentary procedure that would damage the work of the House.

Perhaps worst of all, it damages the dignity of parliamentary debate in the eyes of Canadians.

It is a great pity, for it means we are squandering the respect and legitimacy that democracies like ours need in order to survive and thrive.

That some Canadians should be turned off by these filibusters is hardly surprising. During the marathon voting sessions, Canadians are treated to images of MPs bobbing up and down like puppets, sleeping at their desks and reading books or newspapers. Reviewing such a spectacle, some Canadians may conclude that parliament is not a place that takes the nation's business seriously and that MPs are engaged in silly partisan games.

While this is clearly not the case, we nevertheless must face up to the fact that such tactics, while perhaps justified in the minds of those employing them, are hurting the dignity of parliament and the respect of Canadians for the institution. Clearly this can not continue.

The motion before us seeks to address this issue and repair some of the damage caused by the amounts of abuse to parliamentary procedure in the debating system. To do this, it proposes to restore to the Speaker his or her power to select motions for debate and filter out others which are frivolous, repetitious or clearly intended to obstruct the business of the House at report stage.

Returning the decision to eliminate frivolous motions to the honoured institution of the Speaker I do not think could be opposed by many. The Speaker we have in place has the respect of all members of the House, as I think we could see by the very strong acclamation achieved when he was selected in a vote by all members of the House. Of course the Deputy Speaker and Acting Speakers are very well received as well by the House.

To address the function, many parliamentarians have been involved over the years in studies with other parliaments and procedures. We can usually consider the experience of the U.K. house of commons. Therefore, the motion calls upon the Speaker to be guided by the practice followed in the parliament of the U.K., in effect allowing him to draw on experience of a parliament with the longest history in the world in determining whether to select motions for debate at report stage.

Once in place the change would allow members on all sides of the House to get on with the work of debating and studying legislation, which is after all why Canadians elected us in the first place. It would also restore the traditional functions of the House and reinforce the role of House committees in considering amendments to legislation.

As members are aware, many amendments which would normally be introduced at the committee stage are now being brought forward instead at report stage. This practice weakens the committee system by denying members from all parties the input provided by such amendments during their detailed study of legislation.

Finally and perhaps most important, it would remove a misuse of House procedures which has damaged the dignity of parliament and discredited the institution in the eyes of many Canadians. As a result, the change would facilitate the work of parliament and help restore the confidence of Canadians in the debates of the House and its ability to address the issues that matter most to Canadians. Clearly this would be good for parliament and good for this nation as a whole.

There are a number of issues in my riding that I would like deal with. I receive dozens of phone calls and e-mails. There are groups that want to see me. If that time is taken up by frivolous motions to a bill, it would not help me in my work and I would be very frustrated by it.

As a new parliamentarian, I have been frustrated by the lack of time to do all the things we are allowed and expected to do and that I want to do in this role. I have the great honour to be in this role. There are a lot of things I would like to try to accomplish to help my constituents and groups forward their agendas and to look at improving legislation. However, the amount of responsibilities and possibilities are just immense. I am sure all speakers in the House find this.

Unlike some provincial and territorial legislatures, the House sits five days a week, most nights until 6.30 p.m. Tonight we are sitting until maybe 11 p.m. We have a long sitting until June 22. That is a lot of sitting time and just one function of members of the House.

As well, there are committee meetings for detailed discussions on bills, research and comments. If there is a lot of research, we have binders full of material. Input from people giving evidence before committees has to be reviewed. If we are doing a good job, we comprehensively study the bill to make sure it is an excellent bill. That takes a lot of time.

Just because those two items coincide in time, I find it very frustrating. We have to take time away from one or the other, either sitting in the House to try to understand the debate on all legislation or narrowing the time down to our committees. Already, without adding frivolous motions, we have limited time for our functions.

There are various caucus meetings on specific areas which I find very productive. For instance, I have been attending a children's caucus, foreign affairs caucuses and regional caucuses in different parts of the country. It is a very productive to get into some detail in areas we would not be able to otherwise. However, once again it has been very productive for me in moving forward things that my constituents are interested in. On the other hand, it is a third time constraint.

The next item is all the e-mails we get, either in our constituency offices or in our Ottawa offices. I am sure all members of parliament try to do their best to respond them and be sensitive to their constituents.

In the same manner we have written submissions. Sometimes the written submissions, at least the ones I get, have huge backgrounds of documentation which I take on the plane with me to try to get through them all. I still have not got through them. There is a vast quantity of material.

Then there are individual groups that are experts in their areas. We try to respect that. These groups can bring a tremendous amount of research material to us. In Yukon we have the mining association, the Yukon Tourism Association, the British Columbia and Yukon Chamber of Mines, the Klondike Placer Miners Association, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, the Yukon Grants, the Yukon Chamber of Commerce, the Whitehorse Chamber of Commerce, the Skookum Jim Friendship Centre and the Victoria Faulkner Women's Centre. There are all sorts of groups that have detailed perspective they can bring to us on issues that we have to also add to our workload.

I cannot believe I am the only one who feels that way. All members of the House must be slightly depressed at the amount of work they have to do and the time in which they have to do it.

Members will understand that being new, I do not always know how to prioritize. Some nights I am in this building until three in the morning. Members can rest assured that I would be very angry if I was here because I was voting on 3,000 frivolous amendments to something. Members of all parties have enough other things they could do with that time.

I hope that would be the intent of the motion and would be the result of its passing. I cannot believe that members on the other side would not feel the same way too, that they would like more time to do the things their constituents and the groups in their ridings ask them to do and to review more of the legislation. Obviously none of us can review all the legislation that comes before us in detail because of all our other duties. If we could free up some of the time from sitting here voting on frivolous amendments, I think all of us would be happy.

The bill does not give any more control to the government side, whichever it happens to be in a given year. It does give control to the respected institution of the Speaker to eliminate frivolous amendments and motions. I do not think there are many who could argue with that.

On a number of occasions opposition members have talked about different suggested improvements, as recently as the speaker before me. I cannot imagine not getting their support because the motion is in line with the type of intentions they are trying to promote.

There is a tremendous cost to operating parliament. Of course it is not only for the 301 members but for the whole parliamentary support that goes with it. Does anyone really think about the cost of that to Canadian taxpayers and the cost of taking our time away from serious debate?

[Gar Knutson, Liberal, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Seventeen thousand bucks an hour.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Someone said that it costs $17,000 an hour, but I think there is a lot more in personal time as well that could be better used than on frivolous amendments.

Members opposite, and especially my friend from Elk Island, have years of experience and talents to bring to parliament, to their constituents, to legislation, to committee meetings, to doing research for committees and to Canadians in general. Do members opposite really think it is advantageous to squander those talents by sitting here while 3,000 frivolous amendments are proposed and voted on?

Members of the loyal opposition in their opening addresses to the motion used the term parlez-vous. They did not know any French, but they thought it meant something about talking and that the House was meant as a place for serious discussion and debate. That would be exactly the result of the motion. If we were to eliminate everyone standing 3,000 times on a frivolous amendment, would there not be more time for serious debate?

Should we not talk just about things that are important to us members of parliament?

In conclusion, hopefully a minor change that eliminates frivolous amendments will allow us to get on with some of the very important things that we do here. I personally have a great respect for this institution and will do my best to do productive things with my time.

[Ken Epp, Canadian Alliance, Elk Island, AB]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I wonder if we could have unanimous consent for five minutes of questions and comments with the member because I have some important things I would like to say.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

I am sorry, but that is not a point of order. I think the hon. member for Elk Island already had his question and comment.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Madam Speaker, to say that it is a pleasure to take the floor is an understatement. It is a pleasure to discuss issues with my colleagues, but I am not so sure that it is a real pleasure to address a motion like this one.

Earlier, I was surprised to hear the hon. member for Yukon say that voting on 3,000 amendments takes a long time, that it does not make sense. I remind the hon. member for Yukon, who was just recently elected to the House of Commons, that this is an episode of parliamentary history that he has yet to experience. Therefore, he may not be in the best position to make a comment of that nature on the 3,000 amendments and on the incidents if I may use that word surrounding the bills on the Nisga'a and on the so-called clarity, bill.

That being said, I want to make some kind of a connection with what I just said concerning a possible amendment to the Elections Act to allow 16 and 17 year olds to vote. It is a strange coincidence that I rose to speak just a few moments ago on the bill introduced by the member for Churchill, and that I must now speak to Motion No. 2. I see a certain relationship between the two and I will explain what it is.

A few moments ago, I was talking about the low voter turnout in the last federal election, and I had occasion to do so a little earlier in the session in connection with bills having to do with the Canada Elections Act. I think it is appropriate to repeat this, because it is fundamental to my point.

If the government wants to make itself feel good by saying that it obtained an even greater majority than in the 1997 election, and that it therefore has a mandate to govern, I might draw its attention to the fact that it received about 40% of 60% of the vote. That is really not much.

This points to a fundamental problem in our political system. When members of the public lose interest in public affairs, there is an urgent need for action. Democracy must be constantly treasured and nurtured like a flower. Obviously, in the present situation, democracy is ailing because, with each successive election, the interest of the public in public affairs, elections, and the management of the affairs of state, is slowly but surely dwindling away.

With each successive election, voter turnout drops a little lower. We need to give ourselves a wake-up call and take it in that something serious is going on. There are a number of possible explanations.

Perhaps the government's lack of ethics, which we have been pointing out in recent weeks, is one of the explanations for Canadians' continually declining interest in what goes on here in Ottawa.

There are two other factors I can identify, which I would like to bring up once again. First, there is the government's systematic refusal to consider any in depth reform of the existing electoral system. I referred to the appointment of returning officers a moment ago.

There is no hiding one's head in the sand. Each of us in the House faced organizational problems during the latest election. Perhaps we should ask ourselves a number of questions, about the competence or incompetence of certain returning officers in the last federal election, among other things. Obviously a number of major problems occurred, which should be analyzed. Perhaps, as I was saying, the competence of certain returning officers is at issue in some instances.

The government is refusing to contemplate any change to the system of funding political parties. The chief electoral officer said “In democracy, it is important to know where the money goes and where the money comes from”. It is worrisome for people to feel or have the impression that those contributing to party coffers, including the major corporations, which contribute huge amounts to the coffers of the traditional parties, hold greater sway over and have greater access to elected officials than do they, the people who chose them.

It is no surprise that the Canadian public shows such cynicism and lack of confidence in institutions as it does today with respect to what is going on here in Ottawa.

There is one other factor that needs considering: parliamentary reform. This government was elected in 1993 on its stated desire to change things, to restore public confidence in parliamentary institutions. What has it done since? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, except to reinforce the power that was already concentrated in the hands of the Prime Minister and his cabinet. This power that was already too highly concentrated in the hands of so few people was concentrated still further. It is nevertheless surprising, as I pointed out to the House earlier, that with a scant 40% of the votes close to 100% of power could be concentrated in the hands of so few people.

Not only has the government failed in its duty and commitment relating to parliamentary reform, but it has also, and more importantly, gone so far as to sneak one reform past us. The government seeks to ensure that the few powers vested in parliament, the opposition parties and Liberal backbenchers are taken from them and handed over to the all-powerful clique that surrounds the Prime Minister.

It is nonetheless surprising that the cornerstones of democracy, that is, a country's electoral and parliamentary systems, could be modified unilaterally by the government. This is a source of worry. I believe this can indeed add to the cynicism, the lack of confidence Canadians, and Quebecers in particular, have in what is going on in Ottawa.

Last time, the government took a unilateral approach to electoral reform. It did not have the support of the opposition parties. It even went so far as to ensure that, at third reading, the electoral reform bill was debated only between the government House leader and the official opposition critic.

It was therefore passed or debated at third reading by only two of the five political parties present in this parliament. That is what is happening now with this attempt at parliamentary reform, because that is indeed what this is about.

The government is attempting to impose on us the defunct Motions Nos. 8 and 9, which sought to deprive the opposition of a certain number of its powers. It is coming back to us with a reworded motion, Motion No. 2, whose purpose is exactly the same. But this time it does not want to be the bad guy. It wants to foist this role off on the Speaker of the House, which is even more unacceptable and shocking.

Once again, it is proceeding unilaterally, without the agreement of the opposition parties, and still attempting to concentrate all the powers in the hands of a few, making this Parliament even more—

[An hon. member]

Antidemocratic.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Antidemocratic is not really the word I was looking for, but it is still serious. Irrelevant is the word that comes to mind. There is an increasing trend to strip this democratic institution of its relevance by arranging things so that all the powers are concentrated in the hands of the government and the powers that used to belong to parliament are being progressively taken away.

The government has invoked monetary reasons to justify moving this motion by saying “Listen, when we vote late in the evening, it costs taxpayers an awful lot of money”. The government House leader indicated that it costs $27,000 an hour in overtime to make this institution run.

I do not know where the government House leader got this figure, but just today senior House officials told us that it was very difficult to estimate the operating costs of the House outside regular hours. Therefore, it is surprising to hear the government mention the figure of $27,000 an hour.

Another argument the government used is “This is terrible. Our members are stuck in the House where they have to vote for hours on end. To force parliamentarians to vote for such long periods is a real misuse of members' time and taxpayers' money”.

Is it not our job to vote? Is it not why each and every one of us was elected? Were we not elected to pass laws and to pass amendments to these laws? Of course that is why we were elected, but it seems that this process costs a lot of money an hour.

Again, this government, which always tries to justify its premise that it costs a lot of money to have the House sit outside regular hours when there a whole slew of amendments, asked House officials, through the chair of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs and other government members of that committee, to tell us how much a member of parliament costs an hour. What is the hourly remuneration of a member of parliament here in the House of Commons?

By crunching the numbers and then using a lot of imagination, the government tells us that a member costs about $30 an hour.

The negative effect of this type of figure juggling is that some people at home could find it practical to have members sit longer because their hourly rate would drop. They would be paid $25 or $26 an hour. Some would be delighted that their MPs earn less if they sit more often.

I think the logic, the reasoning, the argument, that the cost of a member and of parliament must be calculated when parliament sits outside regular hours is Byzantine. The debate is totally as I said irrelevant and serves no purpose because it is very harmful.

I come back to what I said earlier. Democracy is a flower to be cultivated. It is distressing to hear the government telling Canadians that democracy costs a lot. Democracy is priceless.

At the moment, the government is trying to sell the budget to our fellow Canadians, by saying “We must pass this motion, because at the moment the opposition members are so out of it they cost a lot by making the House sit outside regular hours”. No logic or reasoning supports such an argument. I repeat the text of the motion:

For greater clarity, the Speaker will not select for debate a motion or series of motions of a repetitive, frivolous or vexatious nature or of a nature that would serve merely to prolong unnecessarily proceedings at the report stage.

I would like to say two things on this. It is basically disgraceful and unacceptable for the government to be claiming that what members propose to enrich parliamentary debate may be considered repetitive, frivolous or vexatious or of a nature that would serve merely to prolong unnecessarily proceedings at the report stage.

The government has only itself to blame. It is primarily responsible for this practice of the opposition parties, which has developed over a number of years, of introducing amendments at report stage.

Today it wants to gain public sympathy for the misuse the opposition parties are making of the House rules. Yet it is the one responsible. Why so? Quite simply, because this government governs by gag orders, and as I have said, has gone so far as to impose a reform of the House standing orders, a change to the standing orders. It feels it is invested with the power to impose this change to the standing orders with a gag. Yesterday, the Bogey Man, the Muzzle Man was back, once more imposing a gag on us so that he can change the way things are done here in the House.

Comparing figures on the number of gag orders used by the last Conservative government in its nine years in power, and the record of the present Liberal government, which has logged seven years so far, we see that the present government has considerably raised the number of gags imposed on legislation. There has been a considerable increase since the Liberals have been in power.

Between 1984 and 1993, under the Conservative regime, the government imposed 49 gags, 9.4% of the total of 519 bills introduced in the House. In its seven years in power, the Liberal government has imposed more than 60, with a total of only 350 bills, almost twice that figure, or 17.4%.

And yet, when it was in opposition, the present government, especially the members of the rat pack, one of whom is now the Government House Leader, decried the dominating and dictatorial attitude of the Conservative government. Today they are trying to preach to us that “The opposition is not responsible”. That argument does not hold water.

If the opposition is forced to resort to such practices, it is because this is the only way, the only means left to it in this parliament to exercise its rights to generate a debate and to oppose a bill. It is the only way left for us to express the opinions of those whom we represent and who do not necessarily share the government's point of view. It is the only way left for us under the rules of the House, because after each reading this government ends the debate, interrupts the proceedings and gags the opposition. And then it is surprised to see us having to resort to such practices.

I conclude by saying that, with this motion, the government wants to put pressure on the Chair.

Today, Le Devoir wrote this about the government House leader “Mr. Boudria clearly indicated that it would not be possible for the Speaker to ignore the motion”.

The government wants to force the hand of the Speaker. I want to refer to a comment on pages 260 and 261 of Montpetit and Marleau. It says that the Chair has an obligation to protect opposition members against the tyranny of the majority. Unfortunately, I cannot read the quote, but that is the gist of it.

Even if that motion were to be passed by the government majority, the Chair must remember, because it is the Chair that is being pressured, that whatever happens, it must always protect the rights of backbenchers and opposition members.

[Gurmant Grewal, Canadian Alliance, Surrey Central, BC]

Madam Speaker, I rise on behalf of the people of Surrey Central to participate in the debate on the government's proposed amendments to the standing orders of the House.

The government's motion reads as follows:

That section (5) of Standing Order 76 and section (5) of Standing Order 76.1 be amended by adding at the conclusion of the notes thereto the following:

For greater clarity, the Speaker will not select for debate a motion or series of motions of a repetitive, frivolous or vexatious nature or of a nature that would serve merely to prolong unnecessarily proceedings at the report stage and, in exercising this power of selection, the Speaker shall be guided by the practice followed in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.

The official opposition is proposing that the government's motion be amended by adding the following:

and for even greater clarity, the Speaker may select for debate all motions, regardless of their nature, if in his or her opinion the rights of the minority have been infringed upon in any way.

It is unfortunate that at a time when members on all sides of the House agree that too much power is concentrated in the Prime Minister's office and exercised by the Prime Minister, the government proposes an amendment to the standing orders that strengthens the executive branch and weakens the role of duly elected members of the House.

The motion is an assault on the rights of Canadians' elected representatives in the House. The government is only interested in selectively borrowing those practices from the U.K. that increase its power over the House of Commons. There are other practices they could borrow from the U.K. that would strengthen our democracy. I will speak about some of them now and later I will speak about committees.

Let me talk about what happens in the House of Commons. Whenever the government feels a formidable challenge or feels that the opposition is embarrassing it, the government cuts off debate in the House and passes whatever piece of business it is working on.

Does the government entertain changes? No. Does it listen to what Canadians are saying? No. This brings us to the heart of some of the procedures in the House that make little or no sense at times.

Why will the government not allow scheduled votes to take place immediately following question period? All members of parliament are in the House for question period. Would it not make sense to vote when everyone is here?

The government is not prepared to entertain good suggestions and ideas from members of parliament on all sides of the House, including its own backbenchers. The government is famous for its thin soup legislative agenda. When the opposition parties try to thicken the soup, the government refuses to allow it.

The country has not had a referendum since the one on the Charlottetown accord, except of course the one on tearing the country apart. The Liberals will not allow important questions to be decided directly by the people. The Liberals are control freaks.

Another issue is petitions. The government does not want to allow Canadians the freedom to speak out on issues. Petitions are good examples of that. Canadians spend a great deal of time and effort in preparing petitions for submission to the House. They spend gas money and go from door to door collecting signatures, in the cold of winter and the heat of summer. The MPs proudly present the work of their constituents in the form of petitions and the Liberals throw them onto a shelf to gather dust. Sometimes after a few months they issue a small token reply using politically correct phrases. The government takes no action on these petitions.

In regard to voting, the Liberal whip tells government MPs how to vote or else. Where is the democracy in that? Not everything has to be a vote of confidence in the House. There have even been assurances from opposition members that a certain vote would not be considered a vote of confidence. An example of this was the vote on hepatitis C.

The government must wake up to the needs of the people in this new millennium. The government is not expected to fall each and every time the 301 members of parliament tell the government what to do. If a vote goes against the government, that should start a process whereby members of parliament work with the government to reach a compromise or to modify the government's position or to do a great number of other things that would allow the will of the people to be done.

Another important aspect of this issue is how we work in committees. The government could allow opposition members to chair more standing committees as they do in other countries, including the U.K. Regarding the election of committee chairs, secret ballots are still not allowed even after insistence by the opposition.

The voting procedure in committees is a completely partisan exercise in which government members gang up on opposition MPs. Even the future business of the committee is decided in a partisan manner, with the government members taking orders from the higher-ups. Even the decisions concerning witnesses who will be permitted to appear before the committee are taken in a partisan manner.

The government prevents significant issues from being dealt with by committees. Through votes in committees where the Liberal members hold the majority of votes, the government can ensure that its own agenda is pursued. Any business that it does not want to deal with never gets heard by the committees.

It is no secret that the government refuses to adopt most of the amendments to legislation that are submitted by opposition members from all parties. Often government members will hold press conferences without making the reports available to opposition members just to pre-empt them by not giving them enough time to prepare their responses, or to not give opposition members credit where credit is due most of the time.

The government is also fighting to prevent committee hearings from being televised. It knows that the way it runs committees is a farce and it does not want Canadians to be able to watch the circus that the House committees have unfortunately become under the dictatorship of this government.

In regard to the various kinds of appointments, the power to appoint senators, the auditor general, the ethics counsellor, the privacy commissioner, the information commissioner and others should not reside exclusively with the Prime Minister's office. People in positions such as auditor general, ethics counsellor and information commissioner can possibly, after their intensive work, make excellent recommendations to government departments but they are not allowed to do that. People in these positions only report on their investigations and the government can then throw out those reports.

Some of these reports should be considered binding on the government. They are in fact supposed to give direction to the government so they should not be ignored, buried, shelved or ridiculed. The government not only covers up these things but also ridicules and tries to tear down the integrity of the person doing the criticizing.

In regard to parliamentary trips, many members of the House, from all parties, go on international trips from time to time. Whenever delegations from the Parliament of Canada travel abroad, they should be team efforts. Opposition MPs are often denied briefings. They are left out of some of the events and meetings held abroad. Often the government officials will prohibit the opposition members from talking to the media about findings or other issues relating to the trip. They restrict the opportunity for opposition members to express the opposition's views or perspectives. The procedures used by the government are partisan in nature. The Liberals cling to a mentality of exclusion that defeats the full representation of the people of Canada to the outside world.

In regard to special treatment, decisions on government grants, jobs, favours, appointments and a host of others are made by the government to benefit the governing party, the Liberals in this case. Sometimes ministerial permits or visitor's visas are issued to visitors to Canada upon request by government members, even though these same visitors have been refused permits or visas when they applied through opposition MPs.

Canadians are not being treated equally in many respects. The government engages in favouritism based on political support and perhaps sometimes on monetary donations. These are problems of procedure. The process should be fixed so that these kinds of things are not permitted.

In the House, the position of Clerk of the House is a responsible and respectable position. The Clerk of the House is appointed by the Prime Minister. The clerk advises the Speaker. With due respect to the Clerk of the House, our Speaker is elected by secret ballot and the Prime Minister's office continues to try to have a hold on the Speaker through the clerk's office. It defeats the purpose of the election of the Speaker of the House. Canadians do not think it is fair for the Prime Minister to give the clerk a job and then expect the clerk to be neutral and impartial. I say this with great respect for the Clerk of the House, who is a wonderful person, but I maintain that it is not fair. It is not even fair to the clerk.

Question period in the House is another area of procedure in which changes should be considered. Most of the time, the ministers do not provide real answers to important non-partisan questions.

[An hon. member]

That's why it's called question period.

[Gurmant Grewal, Canadian Alliance, Surrey Central, BC]

Then they tell us that is why it is called question period. This is not how it should operate. Quite often ministers reject the facts and premises presented by opposition MPs. They often ridicule opposition members when they ask sincere questions. The media calls question period a farce, a circus, and it is no wonder.

In regard to debates in the House, take note debates are another farce. The procedure the government clings to is one whereby the cabinet or the Prime Minister's office makes the decision and then allows a debate in the House after the decision is made. They do not listen to the debate. Nothing in the contributions during the debate changes that already made decision. The ministers adopt none of the recommendations made by the MPs from any of the political parties during that debate.

Most government MPs read speeches prepared by bureaucrats. Often, less than 10% of MPs are even in the House during debates. I myself once gave a speech in the House when the only people in the House were the Speaker and myself. Often there are more pages in the House than MPs, as we see today.

The procedure prevents anyone on the government side from attending the House with an open mind. Many of the bills we debate here are only a couple of pages in length, yet they sometimes have hundreds of pages of attached regulations, which are never debated in the House.

The procedures the government clings to are giving us government by regulation, not legislation. I call it governing through the back door.

I was the co-chair of the House and Senate Standing Joint Committee on the Scrutiny of Regulations. That committee has about 800 sets of regulations that are in the process or pipeline of being modified or struck down, but the cabinet refuses to take action on these 800 files. It stalls, it denies, it drags its feet and it stonewalls the committee. Some of these 800 files are 25 years old. Imagine that. Those regulations are not supposed to be there. They have been hanging on in the system for 25 years. It is a disgrace. It is so undemocratic that it is anti-democratic.

The government motion we are debating today is an insult and an assault on the rights of MPs. It is an attack on democracy. It is a vindictive exercise in response to the Nisga'a debate in the last parliament when the official opposition used a procedural tool to cause a voting marathon to alert Canadians to the anti-democratic way in which the government was running the House.

I am told that for the Nisga'a debate the hon. member for Elk Island, who is a very dedicated member of the House, more dedicated than many other members of the House, and who is always in the House listening to the debates and participating actively, asked for an incremental cost of the Nisga'a debate, but the reply he got was that the incremental cost was not available. Perhaps there was no incremental cost because many staff members traded off the hours they worked. Probably the closure motion we are debating today will keep us up to eleven o'clock or maybe later.

I strongly believe that the Liberals want to prevent that tool from ever being used again, that tool we attempted to use in order to exercise our democratic rights. Why does the government not simply behave in a manner that would not require the opposition to use the Nisga'a procedural tool ever again?

Be democratic and the opposition parties will not use that procedure any more.

Another important issue is private members' business. Again, it is another farce. Ideally, or in theory at least, private members' business should give the elected representatives of Canadians an opportunity for an initiative to contribute to the formation of legislation in Canada. It should be an opportunity to raise the voice of their constituents in parliament.

A private member's bill or motion for the production of papers does not contribute much to the legislative process unless it is votable. A limited number of private members' bills and motions are made votable by the government. To make private members' business votable is a partisan exercise. It is not supposed to be like that, even though there are members from all parties on the committee. I am convinced from my practical experience that it is a partisan exercise.

It is supposed to be a non-political debate. Very few members come to the House with an open mind. Private members' business is like a pacifier. A pacifier is put in a baby's mouth but there is no milk coming out of it. It is given to a baby without telling the baby to shut up. It is so like telling someone diplomatically to go to hell that the person is looking forward to the trip. It is the same with private members' business. We can write bills and motions, but these things do not cause any change.

When was the last time a private member's bill was passed into law? How many have been passed in the last 20 years? There have been only a few, less than a half a dozen perhaps. Why do we even have private members' business? The government is not fooling us and it is not fooling Canadians.

In conclusion, the procedures the government clings to prevent the House from dealing properly with the expenditures of the government. The supplementary and interim supply budgets are hardly dealt with at all. Is the scrutiny of the money spent by the government not the real purpose for us to be here and to debate? Even that is not allowed to be debated.

I could talk a great deal about how there is no procedure in the House for bringing together the federal and provincial governments. There is little co-operation between these two levels of government and there are no changes being introduced.

The government resists change: electoral reform, Senate reform, parliamentary reform and democratic reform. No wonder the turnout in federal elections is decreasing and was at an all time low in the last federal election.

The credibility of politicians is way down among different professions in Canada. It is high time for reform when members from all sides of the House are complaining that too much power is exercised by the Prime Minister's Office. The government proposes an amendment to the standing orders that strengthens the executive branch and weakens the democracy by weakening and trivializing the role of elected members.

[Lynn Myers, Liberal, Waterloo—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour to speak to the motion tonight. For purposes of public edification I repeat what it is:

That section (5) of Standing Order 76 and section (5) of Standing Order 76.1 be amended by adding at the conclusion of the notes thereto the following: For greater clarity, the Speaker will not select for debate a motion or series of motions of a repetitive, frivolous or vexatious nature or of a nature that would serve merely to prolong unnecessarily proceedings at the report stage and, in exercising this power of selection, the Speaker shall be guided by the practice followed in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.

I wish to say first and foremost that to listen to the member for Surrey Central is really outrageous. I will tell hon. members why. He raised every grievance, perceived or real, and tried to somehow work it into the example of how we will make parliament work better.

This institution, I can tell members from my time in this great House, came about as a result of the founding fathers getting together in 1867 and providing a framework, a template that works well along the lines of the British parliamentary democracy. It is a template that has evolved over the time we have been here. It has worked well in a democratic fashion, to the benefit of all Canadians as a result.

To hear members opposite, in particular the one prior to my speaking and others too for that matter, talking in terms of how this is tearing down the pillars of democracy in Canada and denigrating parliament is not only outrageous but pathetic in its intent. I will tell the House why.

What we have here is something we have honed over time. We have put in place the very pillars of democracy that we now see bearing fruit. I believe it is something to behold and should be something of great pride to all parliamentarians.

It hurts me to hear members, especially those of the reform alliance, tear away at this institution. That is what they are good at. They are good at being negative. They are good at always trying to rip at the very fabric of this great country. It is a shameful spectacle. It is not something we do not expect from them because, after all, that is who they are: people who would rather tear down than build up and people who would rather rip it apart than make sure it works properly.

The purpose of the motion is straightforward. It is to reconfirm the authority of the Speaker. That is you, Madam Speaker and your colleagues. It is to reassert your ability to select motions for debate at report stage in the manner in which they are intended when they are presented in a legislative process in the House.

We can follow the string all the way back to 1867. More important, I believe our parliamentary procedure and what we are capable of doing in the House go back 32 years as the direct result of a committee that looked at these kinds of things.

For the benefit of the public, fearing that members would take advantage of report stage to move similar amendments of little importance or which were dilatory in nature, the special committee on procedure recommended in its report in 1968 that a rule be adopted to permit the Speaker “to select and combine the amendments of which notice had been given”. Such a rule was then adopted.

Why was that done? It was done to enable the business of the House to get done in a democratically elected fashion to the benefit of Canadians. We have committees where we listen to witnesses. We take amendments. We massage the legislation in front of us. With the benefit of the experience of all the members present, at the end of the day we are able then to come out with a piece of legislation that is workable and to the benefit to all Canadians.

When it comes back at report stage we should not have to be hornswoggled, that is a farmer's term I am used to saying from time to time, by the reform alliance or the Bloc. They should not be tying our hands and doing all kinds of outrageous things when it comes to amendments: frivolous, vexatious and downright terrible things to tie the hands of parliamentarians and to tie up the workings of this great House of Commons.

The Speaker has the power to select or group motions in amendment to be proposed at report stage. That is what we are trying to get back to. That is exactly what was adopted 32 years ago, and that is the way it should be. We would like the Speaker's decision on the grouping of these motions in amendment at report stage to be in a manner consistent with the values of parliament.

In doing that the Speaker would address two matters. The first would be the grouping for debate and the second would be the voting arrangement. These are very important. The motions are grouped according to two factors. The first is the content and the second is the place where they would be inserted in the bill.

Motions would be grouped according to content if they could form the subject of a simple debate. Once adopted, they would have the same effect in different places of the bill or if they relate to the same provision or similar provisions in the same bill.

That is straightforward. That is common sense. That is simply making parliament work effectively in the way it was intended to work. Motions in amendment are continued according to the place where they are to be inserted in the bill when they relate to the same line or lines. These motions in amendment would be part of a single scheme for voting patterns.

That seems to be something Speakers have had over time. It is certainly something that was developed and evolved in the 1970s and beyond. It is important that we reassert the Speaker's ability to make those kinds of rulings.

It is fair at this stage to point out that in recent years successive Speakers have felt less and less inclined to exercise their authority in this matter, with the consequence that report stage has been rendered vulnerable to unsatisfactory and unintended use.

For example, in December 1999 the House was obliged to spend more than 42 consecutive hours voting on 469 report stage motions, most of which were concocted at the last minute or in consultation with the reform alliance people and whatever shenanigans they had in mind to hijack the House in a way that was not only unprofessional and undemocratic but downright silly. At the end of the day we spent enormous amounts of time doing things that should not have been done. The reform alliance people proceeded in a very undemocratic way.

In March 2000 the Bloc followed a similar exercise. Having watched the reform alliance people act out their hijinks and their shenanigans, members of the Bloc decided to get in on the act. This was over another bill and it was an exercise that simply spun out of control. There is no other way of putting it.

We were faced in September 2000 with having to deal with 3,000 frivolous and vexatious motions of little intent, motions that were simply silly and downright ridiculous. The Bloc was trying to emulate the reform alliance. I thank the opposition for not doing its job. Its job is to oppose. It is to be constructive. It is to do things in a manner consistent with our great democratic principles. Those shenanigans are not in keeping with that. Rather, they are simply to be silly for the sake of being silly. If that was what they tried to accomplish, they succeeded.

In the last parliament we had to vote for days on report stage motions because of the abuse of the loophole in the standing orders at report stage. That is exactly and precisely the loophole we are looking to close tonight. It is one that should not be subject to the kind of abuse we saw in 1999.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I do not think there is a quorum in the House.

And the count having been taken:

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

Call in the members.

And the bells having rung:

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

I see a quorum and debate shall continue.

[Lynn Myers, Liberal, Waterloo—Wellington, ON]

Madam Speaker, as I was saying, this is precisely the kind of loophole we want to change to ensure that the business of this parliament works in an effective and efficient manner.

The cost of the kind of abuse that we saw in the case of the reform alliance people with Nisga'a and the case of the Bloc Quebecois with respect to the youth justice initiatives bill is totally unacceptable, not only to the House of Commons but to Canadians as a whole.

Canadians who elected us to debate and study legislation resent us wasting the kind of time that the reform alliance and the Bloc members had us do. Canadians simply do not want to see the people, who should be debating legislation and voting according to the will and the needs of their constituents, being hog tied by people who would rather abuse the system. It is an abuse to taxpayers who do not like to spend the hundreds of thousands of dollars that were spent as a result of precisely what the reform alliance people did on the Nisga'a bill and what the Bloc did on the youth justice initiative bill. People do not like to see the squandering of those kinds of tax dollars.

The reform alliance always talks the high ground when it comes to making sure that the—

[Ken Epp, Canadian Alliance, Elk Island, AB]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. We had a ruling by the Speaker that our party is to be called the Canadian Alliance in the House of Commons. In respect to the Chair, the member should comply with that previous ruling.

[Lynn Myers, Liberal, Waterloo—Wellington, ON]

The taxpayers resent that kind of frivolous frittering away of tax dollars. I suppose it is better to give $800,000 to a law firm that would have settled for $60,000.