Debates of Feb. 27th, 2001

Standing Orders

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

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. There does not appear to be a quorum in the House.

And the count having been taken:

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

The Chair recognizes quorum and debate shall continue.

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

Madam Speaker, it is not fair to the House of Commons staff who do a great deal of work on our behalf as parliamentarians. It is not fair to have the reform alliance people and the Bloc for example—

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

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The ruling of the Chair was that the party should be named the Canadian Alliance. The member is showing disrespect to the Chair to continue to defy the Chair in this way. Madam Speaker, you should enforce that.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

The time for debate has elapsed. Will the hon. member for Waterloo—Wellington please conclude his remarks.

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

Madam Speaker, it is not fair to this great institution. This is an institution that has evolved, as I said at the outset, over time based on the great principles of the British model. I believe we have come to grips with a kind of democracy that is an example to the world.

It is unfair to use the kinds of abuse tactics that we have seen taking place over time. It is better that we close the loophole and allow you, Madam Speaker, and your colleagues to make the appropriate judgments based on report stage amendments as they should proceed coming from the committee to us.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, before beginning my speech, I would like to point out that I am going to be splitting my time with the member for Acadie—Bathurst.

It is an interesting position for me to be following the member for Waterloo—Wellington who regularly encounters considerable reaction from members of the House from all parties. He has been known to raise the ire of other members and tonight is no exception.

Needless to say, I disagree vehemently with the tone, tenor and substance of the member's speech. I do not believe he has accurately represented the true nature of the debate and the issues at hand. I hope, in the little time remaining for us to debate this very important issue, that we will be able to do just that.

I am looking forward to the rest of this evening, and I hope the member for Winnipeg South will participate in the debate. He is one member who in the past has talked a great deal about parliamentary reform and the need to make significant changes in this place to ensure greater democracy and greater participation by everyone here. I trust therefore that he, along with many other members, is inwardly disappointed and deeply disturbed in this initiative of the government House leader.

I cannot help but believe that some of the speeches that we have heard this evening are a result of members in the Liberal Party feeling that they must jump to it, listen to the direction of the House leader and, contrary to their best wishes, say “Yes, sir; no, sir; three bags full, sir”.

What we are seeing today is nothing more than the typical behaviour of what we have all come to know as the model of trained seals. I see the member for Winnipeg South is responding appropriately.

[Dick Proctor, NDP, Palliser, SK]

He is practising.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North Centre, MB]

He is practising, as my colleague from Palliser has just said, his part, which is very much at the heart of this debate tonight.

It is very ironic that we are here today debating a motion, which the government has put closure on, that would strip away the powers of elected members in this place. It is ironic because today is the day when the auditor general delivered his farewell report to this place. He made a very clear statement at the public accounts committee today about the importance of preserving the traditions of parliament and ensuring that members in this place are able to exercise their rights and responsibilities and are able to hold the government to account, not only in terms of financial matters but in all questions pertaining to legislation, programs and initiatives.

I think it would be very appropriate to remind members of what the auditor general actually said today. He said:

I also ask those who have become cynical about their government to reconsider. Our institutions are the best defence of ordinary citizens against adverse trends that require collective action.... It is our duty as citizens to strengthen the institutions of government. Those of us who are or who have been inside the system have a duty to ensure that we remain accountable for our actions and the vast resources and aspirations entrusted to us.

That is what we aim to do in the debate tonight. That is why we raised such concern about the action of the government today.

We began this session with great hope and aspiration that in fact the 37th Parliament of Canada would begin with a new attitude and a new approach to accountability, democracy and transparency. We held out hope because members from all sides and from all parties in this place were talking about the need to reform parliament. We held out great hope because there was a reference in the Speech from the Throne about the need to reform parliament. We held out hope because there was a tremendous debate going on in the media and with the public about the need to ensure that this place, the people's Chamber, was able to execute its responsibilities according to the wishes of the people.

Needless to say, we are off to a terrible start. This is a very rocky beginning to an agenda that was supposed to be about meaningful change here in parliament and in our electoral system. It was barely a couple of weeks into this session when the government decided to crack the whip and ensure that all members voted against the motion to require an independent ethics counsellor.

A day or two after that the government brought in closure on the very first bill it had introduced in this session, the employment insurance bill. We have tabulated it to be the 69th or 70th time that this government has brought in closure in the last few of years.

A couple of weeks after that the government brought in this motion that would in effect take away the ability of parliamentarians and opposition parties in the Chamber to amend bills at the report stage. To top it all off, the government had the gall to bring in closure on that motion. What in effect we are dealing with today is closure on closure.

Members on the government side tonight are trying to defend their position by suggesting that what they are doing is in the best interests of parliament and of the people of Canada. They say that they want to keep vexatious and frivolous issues away from us. I think the arguments being used tonight by the Liberal members in the Chamber are vexatious and frivolous. They do not get at the heart of the matter, which is how to truly reform the House in a fair and reasonable way involving all parties and all players in the Chamber.

As some colleagues have said earlier in the debate, what the government chose to do was arbitrarily bring in reform to deal with what it considers to be an abuse of the parliamentary process without addressing its own abuse of the system, its own rampant use of closure, its own political manipulation of the committees and without addressing the way this whole place is controlled, used and abused by the executive of government.

Surely we should all be participating together in ways to reform this place, and this is not how to do it. We need to find a way to work together and make the necessary changes. This kind of dictatorial, arbitrary and heavy-handed move on the part of the government is a setback to that worthy goal, that important aspiration of making this place more representative and more democratic.

The auditor general's report came out today in which he stated:

For democracy to work and for government to be efficient and effective, Parliament must be able to play its part.

There is no question that parliament is not able to play its part now. Parliament is not able to play its part because of a series of actions taken by the government to strip parliament of its powers and to deny members of parliament the opportunity to play a meaningful role in the process.

I only have to refer to the standing committees as an example of the way in which the government has controlled that process by prohibiting members from dealing with the serious questions of the day, such as the future of health care in the country.

The government has denied members the opportunity to participate fully, has made decisions outside the Chamber, and has applied the heavy hand of closure motions such as the one we are dealing with today, to strip us of our powers and ability to represent people as we aimed to do at the outset of getting involved in politics.

I hope members on the Liberal side will reconsider and rethink this position, take it off the books, and stop this nonsense so we can all get down to the important work of seriously dealing with parliamentary reform and ensuring this place preserves its proud tradition and example of democracy and citizen participation.

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

Madam Speaker, first I could say that I am pleased to rise in the House this evening to speak to this motion, but, at the same time, it is unfortunate that we are once again taking a step backwards with respect to democracy here in Canada. It is truly a step backwards; we have a lovely House of Commons here so that we can make the laws of the land, introduce bills and motions, and govern the country.

We have the Liberal government across the way, saying “There must be respect for the House of Commons, but we are going to silence the opposition. We are going to take the opposition's privileges away”. It is sad to see a party which, if I recall correctly, around 1988-89, when it was in opposition, was glad to be able to rise in the House of Commons and debate bills. The Liberals were glad to be able to make amendments to bills. Back then they did not like it one bit when the Progressive Conservatives tried to stop them.

We all remember the GST bill. The Liberals turned up with a whole string of amendments. Did the government of the day tell them they were abusing the system, abusing parliament, because they wanted to do their job? It is a disgrace that in 2001, particularly after the 2000 election, the government says it is going to be open to parliamentary reform. It says it will sit down in parliament, and we are going to be able to discuss and look at parliamentary reform together.

This evening, they turn up here with a motion. They want to shut up the opposition again, but I believe we have a role to play in democracy. We too are capable of shouldering our responsibilities. If the government means to say that the opposition is not assuming its responsibilities because there supposedly were 100 or 200 amendments to a bill, is the government assuming its responsibilities when it closes down debate as it has been doing in recent years?

My colleague from Mississauga asks whether we did not want Bill C-2 on employment insurance reform, whether we were not anxious for it to get passed. Yes, I am anxious to see a bill on employment insurance reform passed. I want to see it passed, but as the member representing Acadie—Bathurst, I would like to be able to rise in the House of Commons and explain the problems and loopholes Bill C-2 contains.

That is why I was elected. I was elected to do that job and to assume those responsibilities. I was elected to be able to attend parliamentary committees, assume my responsibilities, and bring up the problems that Bill C-2 brings us. I was elected to be able to introduce motions in the House of Commons, to be able to make amendments to Bill C-2, which does not go far enough. I was elected to do all that in the House of Commons. This seat belongs to Acadie—Bathurst. It does not belong to the member, but to the people of Acadie—Bathurst. Because of that, I ought to be able to stand up and be heard in committee. I ought to be able to make amendments to government bills.

Canada does not belong to the Liberals alone. It belongs to all Canadians. Canadians chose to send members to the House to represent them.

It is unfortunate. When the Bill C-2 was introduced into the House, there was only one day of debate and that was it. It is shameful.

The Liberals have just told us we abuse the system on this side of the House. Yet, in the case of their bill on young offenders, the Liberals had over 100 amendments, and they hold the power. Shall we call them abusers because they drafted a bad bill and realized they had missed the boat?

I do not think it costs the government any more if I am here this evening debating one of its motions. That is why I was elected. I was not elected to go home, but to be here to debate the problems of concern to Canadians and the people of my riding.

I think the government's attitude is unfortunate. It is an insult to watch the member for Waterloo—Wellington rise and try, if I can put it this way, to crucify the entire opposition. They say “You are wicked, you are not acting properly, you are abusers”.

Are we going to call them abusers because we had to call for quorum as the government members were not here? Each time opposition members rise and look for what they are entitled to, they are called abusers. Yet the Liberals did the same thing when they were in opposition; they tried to draw the government's attention to the fact that it was headed in the wrong direction. That is what the opposition wanted to do; it was trying to convince the government that it was not going in the right direction.

With this motion, they are not acting properly. The Liberals will not wait to undertake parliamentary reform together with us, and debate it in committee.

I am the New Democratic Party whip. The whips and House leaders of all the parties thought that parliamentary reform would take place. All of sudden, the government House leader comes up with a motion that basically says “You are a bunch of abusers, we will pass a motion”. Whatever happened to democracy? Were we not supposed to work together?

When you were on this side of the House—

[John Harvard, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB]

You are going to have a heart attack.

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

I will say it again. He said that I am going to have a heart attack. If I have a heart attack because I am working for the people of Acadie—Bathurst, I might as well drop now and I will be proud of it. He should not worry about me. I will take care of myself.

It is important that the government stop playing these games. It must give an opportunity to the other parties to do their job.

It is a disgrace. The Liberals' excuse is that the opposition did not want to pass Bill C-2 on employment insurance. They came up with a measly 5% when people back home are in the gap from February to May. Yet they know we need to get rid of the intensity rule. As for us, in the opposition, we will act responsibly. We will represent our constituents.

The government has no business saying we are abusers. I will never accept that from members opposite. I will never accept this, because I was elected to represent the people of Acadie—Bathurst, and I am going to represent them to the best of my ability. I am not going to be swayed and intimidated by the people across the way, by the Liberals, I guarantee it.

This is a democracy. This is not the United Kingdom; this is Canada. We do not need to follow the example of the United Kingdom. We can build on our own experience and work together. I am sure that if we were to sit down at the same table and try to find solutions to certain problems, we would come up with results.

Maybe if the opposition turns up with a string of amendments, it is because the government's bill does not make any sense. What can the opposition do?

I recall one tactic that was used once: one opposition party refused to enter the House of Commons. They ignored three or four bells. Some will say that this was perhaps not right, but others will say that at least they made their point and that Canadians had a chance to hear it.

The Canadian Alliance introduced 471 amendments to the Nisga'a bill.

I was happy to be able to vote against it 471 times. I thought I had earned my paycheque. I think that, after that, the Canadian Alliance understood that Canadians did not want these amendments.

The thing is that we were able to put our democracy to work in the House of Commons, and we do not need the Liberals to shut us up. That is one thing that we will not stand for.

I appreciate whatever little time I was given by the Chair. Hopefully, the Liberals will change their minds by 11 p.m. this evening, restore democracy to the House of Commons, and stop being a gang of dictators.

[Reg Alcock, Liberal, Winnipeg South, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am particularly interested in this topic and I wonder if you would inquire of the House whether there is unanimous consent to give me unlimited time.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

Is there unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[Reg Alcock, Liberal, Winnipeg South, MB]

Madam Speaker, I will try to squeeze my remarks into the 20 minutes that are available to me. Let me see if I have it straight. We are gathered here to debate the right of the opposition in this case to force the entire House of Commons of Canada to spend hundreds of hours voting on important motions like changing a period to a comma.

If I understand what I am listening to, that is what we are doing right now. I have some sympathy for that debate. Some members may not know that I was the opposition house leader in the legislature of Manitoba. Certainly the member for Winnipeg North Centre knows this. I have great sympathy for the opposition and its need to have tools that allow it to force accountability.

To that extent I listen to the debate with some sense of concern. In every place, whether it is the legislature of Manitoba or this great chamber, there are two conversations that go on. There is the conversation that goes on here with the TV cameras turned on, with the lights on and with Hansard turned on to record all of our remarks, and then there is the conversation that takes place in the corridors, behind the curtains and in the coffee shops.

I do not know a member of any party who thinks it is a good idea for us to spend hundreds of hours standing and sitting to vote on frivolous motions. When we get away from the hot atmosphere here and the attempts to embarrass each other and all that kind of silly debate, I have not heard anyone who feels it is a productive use of our limited time to spend the time we do on issues of this sort.

I want to put some of this in context. I too worry about excessive use of time allocation. I too worry about the tools the government has available to drive legislation through without proper examination or proper debate. I too worry about a House where one side becomes so powerful that it need not take into consideration any other opinion.

There is legitimate concern that this parliament, like legislatures and parliaments around the world, has evolved into a tool that permits the government to do exactly that, to impose its will on parliament without having to give proper consideration of debate on the other side.

However to every action there is a reaction. Oppositions have resorted, in part because they have limited tools available, to these rather frivolous and extreme kinds of actions to make their case, to a point where it makes all of us look silly.

I heard one member earlier talk about the Nisga'a treaty tool in an attempt to give some dignity to the fact that we sat up here day and night for about 40 hours. I think that member's claim to fame was that he actually voted on every amendment because he could run in and out to the bathroom.

Before I get into some of the solutions that I think exist to this problem, let me try to provide a bit of a context and be quite serious about it. I spend a lot of time thinking about it, as I know other members of the House do. I have had very lengthy and, I think, fruitful conversations with the House leader for the New Democratic Party, who is one of the more experienced and distinguished members of the House. He has spent a lot of time here and is very thoughtful on these issues. I respect his advice.

The first question is how do we get here? I would argue that there are whole bunch of forces at play. One of them is that the speed of life, the speed of business, the speed of change, the need for decision, everything in the external world is moving faster.

Bill Gates, in his most recent book, describes the decade that we are now in as the decade of velocity, the decade in which the major challenge to everyone will be to manage rapidity, the speed at which things have to happen. This just did not occur at the millennium. This increasing speed has been going on throughout our lifetime. It has been going on throughout history and has accelerated to a pace where changes take place within the context of one generation. They are intergenerational. They are multiple changes within a single generation.

As a result, there has been enormous pressure on the institutions of government to respond quickly to changing circumstances in the external world and to changing circumstances in the communities within which our citizens to whom we are accountable live.

Over time, slowly but sequentially and invidiously, the governing side of the House has adopted a series of tools that allow it to move its agenda forward faster and allow it to clear it quickly. It is worthy of recognition that this has taken away some time for thought. It has taken away some tools that the opposition had to force more debate and to slow down the speed with which something could happen.

I believe the debate on reform of this chamber is an important one. It is a debate that needs to go on now. However, I do separate it from this motion. One of the reasons I feel comfortable doing this is that we have commitments now. To talk about reform is not idle chatter. It is not a hopeful thought. It is in the Speech from the Throne.

In the Speech from the Throne, the government said it recognized there was an issue. In fact let me read it because I think it is important to focus on this part of it.

One of the things I admire a great deal about our current Prime Minister is this workmanlike, piece by piece, step by step approach to solving problems. There is no fancy banner waving. There is the problem and how we are going to find a solution. That is what I see here.

The throne speech states:

The institutions of Government will continue to be strengthened. Since 1993, the Government has taken a range of measures to enable members of Parliament to more effectively represent the views of their constituents.

In this new session of Parliament, the Government will make further proposals to improve procedures in the House and Senate. Among other measures, voting procedures will be modernized in the House of Commons and, to assist parliamentarians in carrying out their duties, the Government intends to increase the resources of the Library of Parliament to better serve the research needs of standing committees of the House and Senate.

It did not stop there. The next day the Prime Minister stood in the House and in his speech, his personal commitment to the House, he said:

Like any human institution, the House of Commons is not perfect. It can be strengthened. Over the years many changes have been made to improve parliament and more will be made to bring parliament into the 21st century.

The House leader is working with his colleagues from all parties on reforms that will make the House work even better for the benefit of all Canadians—

That is a commitment. That is not idle backroom chatter. I am satisfied with that.

The member for Winnipeg North Centre mentioned some of my feelings about this in her speech. She wondered how I could be defending this motion today. I am very comfortable defending this motion. I am tired of being part of a process that looks so foolish, so stupid and has common Canadians scratching their heads saying “What are you guys doing?” This is a bogus procedure. It is one that destroys good work. It wastes important time of which we have too little. I have no qualms at all about getting rid of it.

What is the tool we have chosen to moderate it? We did not say it cannot be done because report stage motions are an important tool. What we do in this motion is reaffirm power and authority already held by the Speaker. We do not give it to the government or to the government House leader. We give it to a colleague who has been elected by all members of the House and who has a majority support in the House.

That colleague is not charged under the motion simply to dismiss opposition motions. The Speaker, as the speaker in Westminster has done, is empowered to examine those motions. If the Speaker feels the government is being too harsh and too forceful in driving things through, he or she can allow all sorts of motions, or if it is felt they are frivolous, he or she may dismiss them.

It empowers one of the modern day democratic reforms. It was not that long ago when the House finally got itself together enough to take an individual who used to be an appointment of the government's side and said “No, we are going to give this person power independent of the government”. That is the position that the motion adds to.

I want to reflect a little on what may come now because I heard a couple of things. I could close my ears to the silliness which I thought was coming. Actually maybe that is a bad word to use. I will apologize for using that word. I do not mean to demean the comments of other members in that sense. Having been in opposition and having been forced to sometimes stand and criticize things I felt positively about, it is very hard at times to feel comfortable doing that. I realize members are trying to protect a principle of accountability. However, what they are trying to defend is something that is so frivolous. They have to be very hard in their hearts to do that.

I tried to pick that apart and hear some of the other things that were being said. There was a comment about the recent vote on the ethics counsellor. There is a saying that a friend of mine has on a poster on his office wall. It reads “For every complex problem there is a simple answer and it is wrong”.

That is the problem which arises when we approach changes in the House lightly. We can all see one little thing that we think is important and needs to be changed. We can all come up with an answer on how to change that one little thing that bothers us at this moment in time. That is not how the House got where it is today. That is not how the rules, the procedures, the precedents and all the things that allow us to work in the chamber have evolved. It takes time. It takes thought. It takes reflection.

This is the place in our country that manages power and authority in the lives of all of our citizens. This is the Chamber in this country that gives citizens their rights. This is an important debate which should be approached carefully and thoughtfully. It needs to be approached with the full involvement of all members of the House. However it has to work both ways. We all have to recognize the demands being imposed upon us externally. The House needs to modernize.

I would like to add another dimension to this issue. I will go back to Mr. Gates for a minute. Mr. Gates talks about the tremendous impact that new communication information technologies have had on the world. He calls it the 1980s, the decade of quality. As these new tools became more ubiquitous and more people used them and feedback loops were developed, people could begin to manage in real time the quality process that affected their business, or manufacturing, or service organization or whatever.

He calls the nineties the decade of re-engineering. As these tools got more robust and as the accumulation of data got stronger and the ability to strike knowledge from that data got stronger, suddenly we saw in very large organizations very similar changes. It was like a stepping down into flatter, faster organizations moving certain kinds of decisions out to the periphery of contact with customers and clients and drawing some kind of information into the centre to involve senior management more directly in decision making. These were radical but important changes. These were changes that increased service quality, product quality and lowered costs.

If I can take members back a step to that little paradigm I would ask them what the quality movement meant for government. It happened in the external community. Where are the quality circles, the service feedback and the client operation improvement systems in government? They do not exist.

What has re-engineering meant in government? God knows there have been enough consultants running around the country selling packages on re-engineering usually trying to bolt crude private sector models, which continuously fail, onto public institutions. Government is a fundamentally more complex organization than the largest business.

What is the restructuring, the re-engineering, the change that has taken place in government? As the world has speeded up and as this tremendous change has taken place in the external environment that affects the lives of everybody we serve, how has this institution changed? The answer is, it has not.

Re-engineering in government since the late eighties and up until now has meant privatization. It has meant separating those things that government delivers from government.

I was an advocate of it when I first came here. I chaired the transport committee when the ports were privatized. I bought all the arguments. I thought we could put them out there so they could be fast and responsive. They could deal with the community, respond to local conditions and all those wonderful service things. What were we really saying? We were saying that government was too slow, too stupid, too inept to be useful in the lives of Canadians.

That is the challenge to us. I am talking about every single person in the House. I am talking about this institution. I am talking about every single Canadian because this place affects every single Canadian. The challenge that confronts us is how we make the instruments of democracy more useful for everybody. That is the debate we are starting. I suspect it is a debate that is going to go on for a long time because it is a huge challenge in governments all around the world.

The problem I have is the attempt here to personalize this. This is the Prime Minister's issue. This is the House leader's issue. That is nonsense. This is an issue that every democratic government on this globe is struggling with and failing in right now.

There is a huge challenge, a much bigger challenge than anyone really fully comprehends yet. I am excited about it. Let us debate those changes.

Let us debate the ways in which we get adequate examination, accountability and control over the important instruments that affect the lives of Canadians. We should stop debating the importance of this entire House standing and sitting for 400 hours to change a comma. That is silly. We all know it is silly, so let us stop it and get on with what I believe will be the most important piece of work the House does in this decade.

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

Madam Speaker, I am very happy to speak to the motion because it bespeaks a continuation of what we were dealing with earlier today, the undemocratization of the House of Commons.

Members from across party lines have for years eloquently described the frustration of being an MP. There is the frustration of going home and speaking to the people who sent us to the House, listening to their concerns and feeling impotent in our ability to represent their concerns in the House.

We agree with the basic idea and principle of the motion put forth by the government that we do not want to have a situation where frivolous amendments are put forth merely to drag the House into a prolonged period of irrelevant action. On the other hand, as my colleague for Elk Island has said, we cannot allow the rights of the minorities to be compromised. That is what we are talking about today.

It is not only the rights of the minorities, but the rights of the majority. We have a situation today where the House is ruled by a Prime Minister who has an iron hammerlock upon the goings on of the House and of the country.

The public understands that and we understand that. That is why we saw voter turnout of less than 60% in the last federal election. That is not something to be proud of. That is something that should be a red flag that says we need to do something to engage the public. We need to do something to bring back the confidence that people should have in this great institution.

Over decades this institution has whittled away. The democratic powers of elected members have been removed year after year. The late Prime Minister Trudeau said something to the effect that members of parliament are nobodies 100 feet off the Hill. I suggest that members of parliament are nobodies on the Hill and that is the problem.

The public understands that and we understand that if we are to be truthful about it. The fact of the matter is that there are good people across party lines who have great things to contribute for the betterment of Canadians from coast to coast, but they do not have the power to represent their people.

Certainly we are accountable. Every four years we are accountable. However during that intervening period of time do we really have the power to represent our constituents so that people can adequately judge us on the actions that we engage in? No, we do not because we do not have the power to represent our constituents.

We have seen over the years the corpses of members of parliament lying beside House because they have tried to do the right thing. They have tried to represent their constituents and to represent their conscience. When that falls afoul of the leaders of parties they are emasculated, rendered impotent, and at the worst level they are thrown out of their party.

Who can forget John Nunziata, who on a matter of principle, a matter of conscience and indeed the issue of the GST and a government promise, said he could not support the government on the particular issue? It violated a promise that he made when he was elected. As a result of doing that he was thrown out of the caucus.

This is the situation faced by every political party today to varying degrees. It is something we have to change. Members of my party have put up ideas such as the ethics counsellor. We put forth a motion to give the government an opportunity to vote for the promise that it made to the Canadian people in the first red book.

The government voted against its own promise of having an independent ethics counsellor. We do not want an ethics counsellor who answers to the Prime Minister; neither do the members from the other side. What we should have is an ethics counsellor who is independent of the Prime Minister and who responds to the House.

We are concerned that with this motion the Prime Minister will exercise more undue and unnecessary control over the House and further strengthen his hold so that decisions will further be made by the Prime Minister and his office staff, who are a group of unelected, unaccountable and invisible individuals who rule the country.

Many members of the public watching today may not know or understand that the structure we have created today prevents and inhibits their views, wishes and desires from being exercised in the House.

Another serious problem is that we do not have any free votes. We talk about it but in effect we do not debate it.

Committees, by and large, are make work projects for members of parliament, and the health committee is a case in point. We have a crisis in our health care system today. Over the years members from across party lines have, as has the NDP critic for health, stood shoulder to shoulder with us. We may have a difference of opinion on what needs to be done to fix the problem but we certainly stand shoulder to shoulder in saying that we need to look at it. We need to examine it and implement effective solutions to save our publicly funded health care system. Given the fact that this is the biggest problem affecting Canadians, not an academic issue but a blood and guts issue where people's lives are at stake, we have a government that has directed the committee to study plain packaging of cigarettes, aboriginal health and other issues that, while important, pale in comparison to the overarching issue of how we manage to save our public health system.

Is the government dealing with the issue of our aging population? We have an aging population and a demographic that will turn all our social programs on their end, from CPP to health care, to other social programs. It is an impending crisis that looms on the horizon. The failure to deal with our aging population and the impact upon our social programs, and indeed on our economy, will have such a profound impact on our society that we will not be able to deal with it and those people who are the poorest in our society, the most vulnerable, from the aged to the young, are the ones who will get hurt. The only way to deal with that is to deal with it proactively. We cannot deal with it in a knee-jerk reactive mode. We have to deal with these problems proactively because it takes time to develop the solutions and enact them. If we do not do it now people will be hurt.

On the issue of the environment, Canada has been repeatedly told that we have some serious environmental problems. We need to address them but are we? No. We go through this mill that goes around and around. Ideas are tossed around in a big circle and they go nowhere quickly. Our failure to deal with these issues causes untold hardship to the public.

People in our health care system who are watching their rivers being polluted by a minority of the industrialists who dump garbage into our rivers and streams want to know why the government is not dealing with it. What do they hear? They hear the sound of silence. They hear nothing. Does that engender respect and a willingness to engage and work with the government? Does that engender a desire to get involved in the political process? No, it does not. In fact, most people want to get involved but they recognize that the House does not work and that maybe they should find other ways to exercise their democratic rights. Unfortunately, too many people have become so apathetic that they are not getting involved at all.

Part of the reason that we have this situation is the unwritten code of conduct we have in the House, a code that rewards zealotry over objectiveness and a code that says if our ideas, our objectivity and our professional training run adverse to the leadership, we must be removed or follow blindly what we have been told. It is a code of conduct that says one must blindly follow the leadership of their party. It is a code that excludes external information from other sources when they run adverse to what the leadership of the party says.

This is disingenuous. We have a system that naturally rewards being able to destroy the other side. Indeed, the role of the opposition is to keep the government on its toes. It is to be the toughest critic of the government that can be found, but it should not and must not preclude the ability of members in every political party to engage in constructive and positive discourse for the betterment of Canadians.

If we cannot use our God given brains, if we cannot engage and pull out the best and brightest ideas from the people of our country, if we cannot stimulate and inspire the people of our nation to bring forth and have acted upon their ideas to make Canada the best nation in the world, what are we here for?

We cannot do that right now. We are seeing cracks develop in our great nation. We talk about western alienation. We talk about the well known disaffection of the west, but it is not the only alienation. We have eastern alienation. We have the maritimers saying that what goes on in Ottawa has very little to do with them. They feel left out.

We have rural alienation. We have a rural-urban split that is not well analyzed or spoken about. The rural alienation is very real. A lot of people who provide the economic backbone of the country are forgotten about. Because of a lack of health care, a lack of resources and an abysmal or a non-existence infrastructure on the part of the government, we have people who are turned off, tuned out, and have a great deal of antipathy toward the federal government.

We have aboriginal alienation, large swaths of aboriginal communities who are suffering the worst possible social parameters in the country today. That has been going on for too long.

My party has been wrongfully accused of being against grassroots aboriginal people. We are the only party which has given the grassroots aboriginal people a vector, a voice in the House. We are not as interested in advocating for the leadership they have as we are in ensuring that the wishes, the hopes and the fears of grassroots aboriginal people are brought into the House in the most eloquent and forceful terms possible. We have tried to do that time and time again.

[Werner Schmidt, Canadian Alliance, Kelowna, BC]

We will continue to do that.

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

As my colleague says, we will continue to do that.

We have francophone alienation. Part of the reason we have such a terrible situation historically in Quebec is a lack of communication. There is justifiable alienation on the part of the Quebec people, the francophonie in this entire country, because they too have not been listened to. If we scratch the surface of many separatists we find some very real concerns, some very real desires to reform the country and to make it a better place for everybody.

That is what we need to listen to and we need to address. It is not rocket science. The government needs to listen to what these people are saying. It needs to go to their territory, their homes and their communities to ask them what they are saying and to listen to what they are saying. Lo and behold it will find that many of the communities across the country are saying the same thing.

I do not subscribe to the notion that we have different types of species of Canadians. We do not have homo sapiens British Columbiensis, homo sapiens Maritimiensis or homo sapiens Ontarioensis. We have one Canadian and one Canada. The hopes, the fears and the concerns of people from coast to coast, whether they are westerners, Ontarians, people from the prairies, maritimers, aboriginals, non-aboriginals, immigrants, non-immigrants, rural people or city folk, their hopes, their fears and their concerns are the same.

They want a job. They want safe streets. They want good health care. They want social programs to be there in their time of need. They want to be sure the people who are most disadvantaged in our community will be taken care of. They want a better future for their children than they have had.

If the government were to address the problems and concerns of the people of the nation in a forthright fashion, it would be elected time and time again. However there is a political vacuum in which we are trying to engage. My party is trying to force the government to say to the Canadian people that it can do better.

Why do we accept a 66 cent dollar? Why do we accept a higher unemployment rate than that of the U.S.? Why do we accept a taxation rate that is so much higher than the American one that it drives the best and brightest out of the country?

Why do we accept education standards in post-secondary and grade school that are below those of our competitors? Why do we accept environmental standards that are not adhered to? Why do we accept aboriginal communities that have social program parameters akin to the third world? Why do we accept three and a half year waits to see an orthopedic surgeon? Why do we accept health care that approaches that of a second world nation? Why do we accept our best and brightest leaving the country?

We should not and do not accept the level of mediocrity the government has been trying to sell to the Canadian people, and the people are not buying it. We can aspire to much more. It is not complex. Effective constructive solutions exist that must be applied in a quick, rapid and effective fashion to address the problems. If we do so, we will be able to aspire to more than we have and to build a country that provides a better future for all Canadians and especially for our children.

What are some of the things we can do? Many members in my caucus have put forth constructive solutions. Our House leader put forth many. My colleagues from British Columbia and Alberta and members from across party lines have put forth constructive solutions, and some have done so for many years.

We have fought for free votes in the House of Commons, and I mean true free votes. No bill can be made a vote of confidence in the government. If a bill fails because it was not good enough, we should send it back to committee and fix the bill.

We can also reform the committee structure. Why have a committee structure that is a make work project for MPs? We should give the committees a greater say. We should let them have greater flexibility in what they study. We should let them address the big issues. We should not allow parliamentary secretaries to act as mini whips who force government members to vote in a certain way. We should have secret votes for committee chairmen so that the best person across party lines has an opportunity to chair the committee. Then we would have the most effective committee possible.

We should expand private members' business. The public might be fascinated to know that members of parliament can get private members' bills into the House only by lottery. Names are drawn. If members are lucky enough to have their names drawn, their bills will go to committee and the committee will decide whether the bills are votable.

No other democracy in the entire world allows private members' bills to be put forward that are made non-votable. What an oxymoron, a non-votable private member's bill. Why even have a private member's bill if it can never become law? It is a waste of time.

The public may also want to ask why the government gutted the legal opportunities and powers we need to put our private members' bills together. They were gutted and removed. The lawyers, the key linchpin in our ability to put private members' business forward, were taken away from us.

At one time there were only three lawyers for more than 225 members of parliament, yet the cabinet had more than 70 lawyers at its disposal. That was a sly but effective way of preventing private members across party lines from being able to put forth bills on behalf of their constituents.

We should be given more lawyers to craft our private members' bills. We should expand private members' hour by two hours on Friday and one hour on Monday. We should make sure that every member of parliament has at least one bill to put forth.

As my time is running out, I would implore the government, for the betterment of everyone here, but more important for the benefit of our country, to democratize the House. If we fail to democratize the House we do not deserve the respect of the Canadian people. The House will be nothing but a dictatorship that compromises the ability of Canada to be as good as it can become. We need to do this now. There is cross party support for it. If we do not do it now we do not deserve the respect we should have.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Charleswood St. James—Assiniboia.

The motion tabled today restates the traditional power of the Speaker not to select for report stage debate motions of a frivolous, repetitive or vexatious nature. This is not so dramatic or unusual, it seems to me. Let us consider what the motion actually says:

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.

What are we doing? We are moving to the system we used to have. We are moving to the system followed by the mother of our parliament and of all parliaments, the U.K. It is not a huge change. We are returning to the original intent of the standing orders we now follow.

It is interesting that this is the same basic concept and rule that is followed by thousands of community organizations across the country who use a very well known rule book, Robert's Rules of Order . I will read from Robert's Rules of Order , the section dealing with dilatory, absurd or frivolous motions. The intent of the rule, which is used across the country by so many organizations, is quite similar to the intent of the motion today. It states:

—whenever the chair is satisfied that members are using parliamentary forms merely to obstruct business, he should either not recognize them, or else rule them out of order. After the chair has been sustained upon an appeal, he should not entertain another appeal from the same obstructionists while they are engaged evidently in trying by that means to obstruct business. While the chair should always be courteous and fair, he should be firm in protecting the assembly from imposition, even though it be done in strict conformity with all parliamentary rules except this one, that no dilatory, absurd, or frivolous motions are allowed.

As an illustration of a frivolous or absurd motion, suppose Mr. A is to be in the city next week and a motion has been made to invite him to address the assembly at its next meeting, the meetings being weekly. Now, if a motion is made to refer the question to a committee with instructions to report at the next regular meeting, the chair should rule it out of order as frivolous or absurd.

That is the rule that is followed all across the country in all kinds of democratic organizations. We are adopting basically the same concept with almost the same wording.

Members opposite are up in arms about this, suggesting that it will limit important debate. Is it important that we go on for hours voting on questions of whether we should have a comma after every word in a bill or whether the bill should be hoisted for six months or reconsidered clause by clause? Such ridiculous motions are not intended to change the substance of a bill but only to waste the time of the House. That surely is not why we were sent here by our electorates.

In the last parliament members had to vote for days on report stage motions because of the abuse of a loophole in the standing orders on report stage motions.

In December 1999 there were over 42 hours of non-stop voting on 469 report stage motions to amend the Nisga'a bill. Were they really motions to try to improve the or change the bill substantively? No. The vast majority of them were vexatious, repetitive, frivolous motions.

In March 2000 the House spent 36 hours voting on 411 report stage motions to amend the clarity bill. Again they were frivolous, vexatious, repetitive motions.

In September 2000, just last fall, there were over 3,000 report stage amendments to the youth justice bill which would have taken two weeks or more to complete in non-stop voting. Let us imagine members of parliament spending night and day for two weeks standing and sitting in the House to vote on all kinds of ridiculous amendments.

The public in my riding will not stand for that. I cannot imagine that members opposite can expect their electorate to stand for it either. It is enough that we take the time we do standing and sitting in the voting process. It is good that the government is looking at the idea of electronic voting to try to streamline the voting process. Sometimes it goes on and on and on. It could be done much more efficiently. Our time could be used far better than in this very slow process.

I mentioned the youth justice bill. I will refer to some of those motions. There were almost 400 motions in Motions Nos. 2,646 to 3,029 from only 44 members to change the coming into force of the provisions of the act. For example, Motions Nos. 2,654 and 2,655, one member's motions, had a different coming into force proposal for the same section of the act. Another member's Motions Nos. 2,657 and 2,658 had a different coming into force proposal for the same section of the act. Motions Nos. 2,327 to 2,418 included almost 100 motions for the timing of a provision, from 691 days to 792 days, increasing one day per motion.

One member who is no longer in the House, Mr. Turp, proposed different times for the timing of the same provisions. Again they were silly, frivolous, vexatious and repetitive motions, wasting the time of the House and wasting taxpayer dollars.

Motions Nos. 3,030 to 3,133 included over 100 amendments from only 44 members requiring a statutory review of various provisions of the act.

What was the point if not to delay things, be obstructionist, cause problems, waste taxpayer dollars and waste the time of members and the time of the House? The cost of this abuse is completely unacceptable to Canadians who elected us to debate and study legislation, not to spend days and days voting on frivolous, repetitive and vexatious amendments.

Canadians in my riding and elsewhere across the country are not concerned about whether there are 10 commas or 2 commas in a sentence. They are concerned about issues like health care, about the taxes they pay and about economic growth across the country.

The concerns I heard during the election campaign in Halifax West were about the fact that Halifax West was undoubtedly the fastest growing area in Atlantic Canada. We do not have the infrastructure to support the growth we have seen over the past 20 years. We do not have the new schools that are needed. We have children in overcrowded schools and old schools that are becoming decrepit. They need new investment and new schools.

They are concerned about the lack of roads in Halifax West and the need for new roads to support this growing area. They are concerned about the need for recreation facilities and the waste of their tax dollars. The last thing they want to see is members of parliament wasting $8,000 an hour sitting here overnight voting on ridiculous motions. It is the last thing they want to see.

They want us to be working. They want us to be looking at how departments are spending money and trying to make them work better. They want us to try to make government work better. That is the reason we are here. Let us spend our time focussing on what government departments and agencies are doing and trying to make them work better. Goodness knows there is a lot of room for improvement.

There are a lot of details we must look at in our work as watchdogs to get government departments to work better for the public. That surely is our job, not to sit here night after night voting all night long on ridiculous motions that wear us out and make us unable to do our jobs the next day, or whenever it ends.

It is a cost that is simply unacceptable to taxpayers who have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime costs for the House of Commons staff to stay when votes go on through the night.

It is also unacceptable for the staff of the House of Commons, who have to work the extra hours or work overtime. It may endanger their health as well.

We should consider what impact this has on the institutions of parliament and how it degrades parliament in the minds of the public when it is engaged in silly activities that are clearly not constructive or substantive.

I realize that members across the way like to find topics to raise so they can have time to talk about all kinds of issues that are of concern to them. I appreciate that, but surely to waste our time sitting here and voting all night long is not an answer to the concerns of their constituents or my constituents. Surely we all can see that passing the motion will make our parliament more efficient and will help us get to the job at hand.

[John Harvard, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB]

Madam Speaker, first I want to thank my colleague from Halifax West for allowing me to take part in the debate by sharing his time.

The first thing I want to say in my remarks, and I want to make it very clear, is that I happen to believe very sincerely that the opposition parties, not just the official opposition party but all parties, play a very important role in the House and in parliament. Their role is just as important as ours, ours being the government side of the House.

[Leon Benoit, Canadian Alliance, Lakeland, AB]

The Prime Minister runs the show over there. What would be the difference if you weren't here?

[John Harvard, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB]

What we need is for everyone, wherever possible, and if we can change our rules, if we can enhance our rules, perhaps we can make—

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh.