Mr. Speaker, the motion deals with empowering you and your assistants to rule on repetitious, frivolous and vexatious amendments at report stage.
I listened to my colleagues this afternoon and evening and found myself agreeing with many points made by some of the members opposite, particularly the member for Winnipeg—Transcona and the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca.
We could have a committee to review the democratic purposes and actions of the House of Commons. This could be done, but that is not what we are voting on tonight. We are voting on a way of preventing amendment abuse and hence voting abuse.
I was involved with the Nisga'a agreement and the work on the bill by the committee on Indian affairs and northern development.
I remind the House that the Nisga'a worked on that bill for 500 years. Chief Gosnell worked on it for 21 years and Frank Calder worked on it for life. This government and previous governments worked on it for some 20 or 30 years. In the last 11 years we finally got an agreement. To have that agreement held up for 42 hours while we voted in the House on frivolous, vexatious and repetitious amendments was terribly disheartening to me, and I am sure to the Nisga'a who watched. It did nothing for public perception.
People have made much of the fact that the public did not understand that waste of time, that waste of talent, that waste of effort. I do not either. We have a committee system that works. It involves witnesses. It involves travel if necessary. It involves all parties in the committee working toward a common end. It is one of the things I enjoy most about being here and working with my colleagues. Sometimes things go awry between committee stage and the House but not always.
Report stage allows motions from members who are not on the committee and have not had a chance to make an amendment, but it is not designed to allow games to be played with the work that has been done by serious parliamentarians. Endless voting on frivolous, vexatious and repetitious amendments is not productive of anything but cynicism, ennui and disrespect.
The member for Winnipeg North waxed eloquent about closure, which is not what we are talking about. The heart of the matter is how we develop good laws for Canadians. Some members opposite talk of overall change, closure, the auditor general's report, et cetera. Somehow they forget that we have just had an election based on party platforms, based on the country's choices for the future.
My colleague from Waterloo—Wellington talked about the development of parliamentary democracy. He suggested it was a slow but steady process. It is adaptive to new technological challenges and social changes. It did not burst full blown from the brow of Zeus or the brow of Simon de Montfort. It developed gradually, haltingly.
There were big steps like the Magna Carta and the Reform Act of the 17th century. There were a lot of little steps day by day. We are taking one of those little steps hopefully tonight and saying that we went too far in this direction. We have to change. We have to come back to the centre and do the right thing. Amendments at report stage were not intended to get us into that kind of trouble.
It has worked because Canada has just been voted for the eighth year as the best country in the world in which to live. That is pretty good.
There is another saying many people use around here and that is “if it ain't broke don't fix it”. The committee system is not broken. Having bills go through at least three stages is good. Our voting system is good and our timing for speeches seems to work. The nonsense of wasting time on silly amendments is not productive, sensible or defensible by any member who thinks his work is useful to his constituents and his country.
Most members have all had experience in many organizations and how they run. We have had experience in motion making, in elections and in amendments. Personally I started at about age 10 with a neighbourhood stamp club among my boyhood chums. We had elections. Minutes were kept. We prepared an agenda. We even had a stamp evaluation committee.
From there I went to cubs, a scout leader, patrol leader, the university student union as a director and a member, staff president at the high school, union president, the hospital board and a lot of other social organizations, and now here. My colleague from Winnipeg South made a great deal of sense. He concentrated on the point of the motion before us: the achievement.
Let me conclude by saying that we should focus on the motion and pass it. It is a festering sore which we can eliminate tonight and then get on with future improvements to our parliamentary system.