Mr. Speaker, I am not trying to be nasty about it, but if this is the sort of level of insight about parliament on the government backbench, it is no wonder we do not have the rebellion that we should have over there.
I was not talking about redistribution of power between government and opposition, although I think there is room for that. I was talking about redistribution of power between the PMO and the cabinet, the cabinet and the caucus, the government and its own backbenchers, the executive and the House of Commons. If all the member heard was me talking about redistributing power between the government and the opposition, I have to go back and read my speech, or perhaps he should go back and read my speech, because that is certainly not what I was concentrating on.
To return to what I said at the beginning, real parliamentary reform has to do with redistributing power in a number of ways around here. One of those ways is between government and the opposition, because over the years much more power has come to reside with the government as opposed to the opposition than used to be the case. I am not asking for something that never was or never could be. I am asking for something that used to be. I am asking for a return to some balance, where the opposition has much more power to hold the government to account than it now does. I do not think that is a violation of any kind of constitutional theory about government.
The government is accountable to parliament. When people go to the polls they do not just elect a government; they elect a parliament. It is out of parliament that governments come. It is not just majority governments. The member said in his question to me that we must have a majority government in order to fulfil this constitutional mandate. No, we do not. We just need to have a government that has the confidence of the House, and that could be a minority government, a coalition government or a number of different combinations, many of which would be much more sensitive to and responsive to the opinions of the opposition and the opinions of the government backbench than what we now have.
We need a situation in which the government does not have as much power to punish its own members and to override the opposition, so that there is some need there for agreement and co-operation. That way other points of view get into the mix and they get into amendments that are accepted rather than rejected. We get better legislation and better policy as a result.