Mr. Speaker, before I start I would like to say that I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Fraser Valley. It is not that I really like it but he came up with an excellent proposal so I must give him time.
I listened to the member for Mississauga West a little while ago. When I looked at my watch and saw the time I thought it was past his bedtime because he was slipping. He was trying to tell Canadians, with his bellowing, booming voice, that this amendment was great. He was saying that the Alliance had taken its supply day motion exactly from the red book. The member was defending it and saying that the Liberals had fulfilled their red book promise. Can hon. members believe that? He said that there was an ethics counsellor, forgetting that the ethics counsellor reports to the Prime Minister and not to parliament as was promised in the red book. The member had the guts to stand over there and say that they have fulfilled the red book promise. That is why I thought it was past his bedtime.
The essence of the motion is about parliament, the voice of the people. In the House democracy works for the government and for the opposition. People who disagree with the government have a voice through the opposition. From what we have seen over the years, our voices have been silenced by procedures, manoeuvres and all the power of the majority government. Opposition parties have eventually had to resort to narrower ways and means of taking their message to the public.
The Liberals stand over there and say that the amendments are not changes but they will not say exactly what the opposition, the other voice in parliament, is trying to do. The opposition is trying to get the message out to the public about what is happening in the House, and its voice is being silenced.
The Canadian Alliance and my colleague from Fraser Valley have put forward proposals on the reform of the House. The whole purpose of the reform is to have a sound, reasonable debate. The other voice can be heard as well, not only the voice of the government.
My colleagues on the other side have said that there are committees where the opposition can debate the issues of the day. We all know that they were in opposition before 1993. They should know very well that those committees are totally ineffective. We have been there.
This is my second term. I have been here for three and a half years. I have never seen the government listen to a committee. It does not. Committees are nice. Committees are a very nice way for the government to deflect criticism of what it wants to do.
The government says a matter is going to a committee. It goes to a committee and when it comes back it is up to the minister and up to the government whether or not it wants to take a committee's recommendation. We are finding that most of the time it is not.
Where is the voice of the opposition, the voice of the other side, the voice of the people who elected us to speak in the House? We stand here and debate, but what happens? Nothing.
The motion, quite interestingly, says the government wants to be guided by the practices followed in the house of commons in the United Kingdom. Of course we all know it is the mother of all parliaments and that would be nice. However other practices are followed in that house which give a voice to the other side as well. A balanced voice is heard in that house, but not here. Here the government picks only what suits it so that it can ram through whatever it wants and forget about what the other voices are saying.
When the immigration minister said the Alliance Party attracted bigots, racists and Holocaust deniers, who was she talking about? Millions of people voted for our party. Was she talking about them?
Is that the respect the government has for other Canadians? Can it not respect the views of the opposition and other Canadians? It cannot. This motion is another example of the attitude that the government has of ramming things through.
We agree that to vote on 3,000 amendments would take a long time. The Speaker will still have some discretion over that. It is not the amendments we are worried about. It is the method of getting the message out. That is what is called democracy.
It is no wonder Canadians are losing confidence in the House. It is interesting that the members on the other side know that and allude to it. The member for Mississauga West referred this evening to one of his constituents. He claims it was a constituent but I doubt if it was a constituent; it was probably a family member who said “I hate all politicians except you”. It was probably a family member who said that, but the point is that Canadians are losing confidence in the House because debate is curtailed. They see the power of the government, the dictatorial power of the government, and their inability to effect any change in the House.
Then we start seeing little flames of separatism. We do not support them at all but those sentiments start to come out. I hope they do not become big sentiments but that is where they start.
The Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs said it was blackmail. It is not blackmail. People are trying to find ways and means of saying what they want to say and having someone listen. If we do not listen, people will find other means to make us listen. That is what the amendments are all about.