Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the people of Surrey Central to participate in the debate.
Members of parliament are supposed to be elected to come to this place, to provide solutions to problems and to contribute to the improvement of our nation's policies. What we have seen over the last decade more than ever before is a significant growth in the concentration of political power in the Prime Minister's Office.
As the executive branch of parliament gets stronger, our legislative branch, the House, gets weaker. MPs find themselves with less meaningful roles to play in our legislative process. The opportunities for members of parliament to improve legislation and participate in policy development is decreasing. Members of parliament and Canadians become frustrated.
The long term objective of political parties is success in elections. It is at the expense of or to the detriment of the work we are supposed to do here. The government often chooses to pass legislation as fast as possible. This thwarts the efforts of the opposition parties to ensure that the House passes the best possible legislation.
Opposition parties are not willing to let legislation pass quickly for the sake of passing it, so they tend to slow down the passage of legislation for the purpose of improving it. The government uses time allocation and closure to curtail or even shut down debate in the House to prevent the efforts of opposition parties.
The weak Liberal government has an abysmal record when it comes to using closure and time allocation to limit debate on the business of the House. This results in a less co-operative atmosphere and produces a more confrontational environment in the House. The media dramatize and promote that confrontation. This parliamentary battlefield prevents the House from pursuing its mandate to be a forum that improves legislation and forms or tests new policies. It causes debate to be redundant and meaningless many times.
Very few members of parliament attend the daily debate in the House. Most MPs leave the Chamber immediately after question period. Debate in the House should allow for passionate arguments to provide political persuasion. Debate should be free, open, fair and not subject to arbitrary limitations.
The proceedings of the House have become no more than a formal exercise. Members of parliament, the media and the public in general pay very little attention to debate in the House. On the government side most of those speeches are scripted anyway.
The Prime Minister never attends debate in the House, while cabinet ministers also very rarely—