Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his wonderful lead into the comment that I would like to offer to the debate. This is an excellent form of debate. It gives us an opportunity to talk somewhat more frankly than we might otherwise speak.
I would like to offer comments on three areas: personal behaviour of members; caucus reform; and parliamentary reform. There is not really a great deal of difference between caucus reform and parliamentary reform.
On the issue of personal behaviour, I find it of some embarrassment to go home on a regular basis and talk about what has happened here, particularly given people's experience with parliament which is question period, which really has nothing to do with questions and even less to do with answers.
The analogy I use when I talk to people in schools, whether it is high schools, universities or public schools, is that if we had to judge the education system by recess, we would probably question the value of our taxpayer dollar. Similarly, if we had to judge question period, we would question the value of our taxpayer dollar. Regrettably that is what colours the public's perception of what we do here.
I am a relatively new MP. I have been here almost four years. I expect that my experience was somewhat similar to others. It is a little like getting married. I really did not know what I was doing. No amount of preparation actually prepared me for this experience. The books are not of any particular usefulness.
I make a point of trying to explain to constituents what I actually do. I had that experience last Sunday afternoon. We are all prone to meet with constituents. There was a group of about 50 or 75 people. I went through my agenda for the last three weeks and explained what it I did, the interactions I had with people and what the issues were. Over the course of half an hour to 45 minutes I did not lose a soul in that conversation. They were quite fascinated by what an MP does outside this Chamber and particularly outside of question period.
I developed a series of points that really are random and somewhat haphazard, but that I think would move us from the point of personal behaviour as we interact with each other to points of caucus reform to points of parliamentary reform, which I hope would be helpful.
I think members, as points of communications with constituents, should publish their agendas and tell people what they are doing. They should explain the issues that are of concern to them.
It strikes me as quite strange that parliament is not particularly proactive in explaining itself to the Canadian public. The counter distinction is amazing when we think about it. The Prime Minister's office literally has dozens of people who do nothing but promote the Prime Minister in a variety of areas, and justifiably so. Ministers literally have dozens of people in their offices who do nothing but promote the agenda of the minister and promote the minister.
The same cannot be said for either parliament as an institution or members of parliament who have little opportunities to communicate. The irony is that unless a member does something outrageous there is no way that he or she will have any attention.
I suppose it is somewhat naive to say that members should not take cheap shots but we are all going to do it. I just throw that out to put it on the record.
Members should be serious about their compensation. I practised law for 22 years. I never noticed that anyone who came into my office was overwhelming in his or her enthusiasm to pay me a retainer. However I learned rather quickly that if I did not ask for compensation for a retainer, which was commiserate with my abilities and skills in a particular area, then I would certainly not get that retainer.
It strikes me as strangely ironic that members are so shy about dealing with their own compensation. I cannot imagine what hockey player, teacher or doctor would work for 50% or 25% of what they are actually worth and still take all the same bumps and bruises. I find that strangely ironic among politicians.
In particular, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation puts out a little pamphlet on a regular basis and dumps all over us. I cannot quite fathom why we put up with that sort of nonsense, but we apparently do. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is not the only vehicle that diminishes the role of MPs.
MPs have to start thinking in terms of growing democracy. We have a group that calls itself the civil society. The civil society has aggregated to itself the position of defending democracy. This is hugely ironic, given that not one or very few of the members of the so-called civil society representing so-called groups that may or may not appreciate the representation have ever voted for any of these people. None of these people have ever run in a municipal, provincial or a federal election. Yet they apparently defend democracy.
It is somewhat trite civic law to say that there are three branches in any government: the legislative branch, the judicial branch and the administrative branch. This debate occurs in a larger context and there is a huge pincer movement by the judicial branch and the executive branch. We live in an age of executive federalism with all its royal prerogatives, and I am using this pejoratively. Those royal prerogatives are being used on a somewhat aggressive basis and have real consequences for members who aspire to having careers in this place.
Similarly the judiciary has been handed an enormous instrument to involve itself in issues of society, namely the charter. I notice that the judiciary is not overly shy about exercising the charter in areas where it feels it should. As a consequence, we have these two very robust and aggressive aspects of government, namely executive federalism and the judiciary, squeezing the legislators and squeezing this place. I respectfully submit that is the context for this debate. I think it is time for push back.
On the issue of caucus discipline and parliamentary reform members need to think through the degrees of discipline. Clearly budget bills are of great significance for this side of the House. Clearly items that we ran on in platforms are of great significance for the House. After that issues of discipline I think diminish.
I had the occasion to be in Mongolia recently. Mongolia has 76 members in its legislature, 72 of whom are with the government party. It has electronic voting. As we sat there I was watching the government lose votes. That was somewhat ironic. Here are we, a mature democracy, apparently explaining to Mongolia, a relatively new democracy, how to exercise its democratic rights.
Private members' time should be reorganized so that there is a reasonable chance that private members' bills will see the light of day. There has been some discussion about that.
Committee hearings should be opened up so that we have draft bills at a much earlier stage and that we have white papers, brown papers and green papers; it does not really much matter. There is nothing more irritating as a member of a committee than to listen to staff members from a department saying that they have consulted with all the stakeholders. Really. Who are these stakeholders and so what?
In terms of earlier notice on opposition day motions, I like to speak to those motions from time to time, but I do not find out about them until 9 or 9.30 on the morning of the debate. Frankly I do not have a great deal of time to think, and I am up on my feet 10 to 15 minutes later responding to the motion.
On shortened deadlines for government responses, I do not see why the government needs 150 days to respond to a committee report or whatever.
I would not be overly embarrassed if the House was closed down for a few weeks every year during sittings and we just did committee work, either committee of the whole or standing committees. It would not bother me in the least.
We could get through a lot of stuff and make spending and estimate debates meaningful. We should either have one committee that looks after it all or have each committee develop some level of expertise so that we can hold the department's feet to the fire.
We should give the House leader time to debate and speak to the issue of time allocation. We have used time allocation from time to time. Opposition members might know that, but the House leader has no opportunity to speak to it on debate.
We need to create an MP culture which empowers MPs. MPs frankly need to go to MP school. They need to know that they cannot be removed from committee by the whip only, that it actually has to be by a vote of the House. They are secure. They need to know that, for instance, they can designate five people in their place and those people are the first up. Therefore a whip cannot load a committee with more obedient MPs than others.
Committees have, as does the House, virtually unlimited power of subpoena which we do not exercise. We can vote for reductions in departmental bills, and we do not exercise that.
I offer these thoughts as a potpourri of things which can be done. I am not overly persuaded that a lot of standing orders need to be amended. I think, rather, that MPs need to realize there are a great number of things they can do. Whether it is singly or in smaller groups, they can make impacts such as my colleague to my left did who I think had a double-double last week with significant pieces of legislation.
We are debating this motion because we love this place. There is sort of a bizarre way in which it all works. As Churchill said, parliamentary democracy or democracy in general is one of the worst of all forms of government until we look at the alternatives. That is the context of this debate.