Mr. Speaker, the hour is late and we are approaching midnight. The fact that so many members are present and anxious to continue debating this matter speaks a great deal to the passion and determination on the part of parliamentarians from all parties in the House about the need to change this place to make it more functional and to regain the golden age of true parliamentary tradition that many have spoken about today.
I feel an obligation this evening, no matter how late, to put forward my thoughts and to repeat some of the concerns expressed by my colleagues in the New Democratic Party. I feel that compulsion in part because the seat I represent was held by two of the greatest parliamentarians this place has ever seen.
I follow on the heels of Stanley Knowles and David Orlikow, two individuals who devoted their entire lives to service on behalf of the people they represented and in the interest of preserving parliament and all its traditions.
Those two individuals certainly taught me, and I am sure many other members of the House, the importance of preserving and respecting the role of the individual member of parliament and always coming back to that driving force which caused all or us to run for political life and to enter this place.
Stanley Knowles and David Orlikow epitomize the desire to serve public office in order to represent and empower constituents. The desire to pursue change, to devote our lives to using parliament to make society a better place, from whatever perspective we come from, from whatever political philosophy that is driving us and encouraging us in our chosen career, and the desire to empower the people we represent is surely the essence of the debate tonight.
Some have suggested in the course of today's debate that there are other motives, that in fact some of us are trying to grab more power for the sake of having more power. Some have questioned individual motives and intentions. I hope that is just an indication of the frustration members are feeling about this place in terms of it being a functional institution.
I believe there is not a person in the House who is seeking to change the rules, to push for parliamentary reform, just to have more power, just to wrest power from the government or just to have more avenues to embarrass the government of the day. We are all seeking and striving for parliamentary change to allow us to be more effective members in doing what we sought to do when we entered this very difficult career path.
As the hon. member for Winnipeg—Transcona said, this debate is all about getting some balance in this place, about giving members the ability to exercise the responsibilities they have embarked upon. It is about living up to the notion of independent minded elected representatives. It is about allowing MPs to play a decisive role on legislation and to pursue the role that electors expect of us, which is to be watchdogs of the public purse.
We are desperately trying to rebalance power in this place and to deal with the fact that power has shifted so much from individual elected representatives, from members of parliament, to forces outside the elected arena. It has shifted to forces outside parliament, to forces with little accountability and ability on the part of people to know that they have some control, some power and some ability to influence the shape of their own lives and the destiny of the country.
The debate is surely about trying to ensure that we can participate in the democratic process to encourage the people we represent to be more active in democratic institutions, in the political process.
How do we deal with the sense that people have of being helpless and hopeless in the face of many external factors when we start feeling helpless and hopeless in this place? Could there be any among us who do not feel helpless and hopeless from time to time and sometimes more often than not?
I entered this place in 1997 with great expectations, anticipation and hopes about being able to exercise the responsibilities handed to me by the electors of Winnipeg North Centre. I held out great hopes and aspirations about being able to influence the course of events and being able to pursue change, the very force which caused me to enter politics in the first place. I am not discouraged and I have not given up, but I can say that my experience in this place has been much less than I expected.
I made a deliberate decision to move from provincial politics to the federal arena because I believed that there were traditions and institutions, as a part of this place, that would allow me to be an effective representative and to give me the opportunity to pursue the kind of change that I thought my community needed.
It has been rather disappointing. I especially expected that this place would offer an opportunity to pursue thorough independent research and investigation through our process of standing committees in the House of Commons. I expected that because it is a process we do not have in the Manitoba legislative assembly. We do not have standing committees that function on an ongoing basis which allow for independent research and investigation. Needless to say I have been very disappointed by what I have experienced, at least with one committee in the House.