Mr. Speaker, it is good to see you in the chair. I know that parliamentary reform is something that is very much on your mind and on the minds of many members here tonight. Throughout the coming days and weeks I am hoping that we can keep this spirit alive.
Many members have engaged in the debate throughout the past number of hours. I commend the hon. member from Edmonton who has a long career ahead of him as a parliamentarian and has shown a great many insights already that will serve us well.
I would like to put a question to the hon. member for Toronto—Danforth. As he has pointed out, he is a long serving member and he has expressed very eloquently a frustration that many members feel from all corners and all parties. He has focused in on one of the key problems that we are wrestling with and finding some difficulty in articulating, the bureaucratic influence that exists.
It appears that the levers of powers given to elected representatives have somehow been stripped away, watered down or diminished. A simple example the member used was of a member being able to access information on behalf of a constituent. It would normally take weeks or months to get a response. We would normally punch in a telephone number of one department only to be sent off to another department or to another province. We may have called our local office only to get another city in another province. He knows the problem. He has encountered it as have many of the members here.
How do we change this institutionalized attitude that appears to exist? It is a non-partisan issue because it has evolved, as have a lot of the problems, but how do we change the mindset or the attitude that seems to exist within the bureaucracy? Should we limit terms for members and senior civil servants? Is there a way we can police the bureaucracy more effectively?