Okay, I cannot go that far.
The point I want to make is that there are a number of things we all agree on and we vote in the House unanimously on those issues, but we do not have a mind meld on every issue.
When we are at committee we want to bring the perspective of the people of Canada and the people who appear as witnesses. We want to hear what they have to say and put that in the context of the legislation with which we are dealing. Hopefully among all of us, as representatives of the people of Canada, we will come up with good legislation.
The government does not lose control or power by not having the chair. Even if the government does not have the chair of the committee, it does not lose the power over that legislation. There are eight Liberal members on the committee, three from the official opposition, two from the Bloc, one from the New Democrats and one from the Progressive Conservative Party. The Liberals still have the majority on the committee. They still have control over what is will be agreed on in the final legislation. On top of that, that comes back to the House and the whole governing party gets to vote. It is beyond me why the government would make such a big deal over the issue of electing the chairs.
The other thing suggested by the government House leader was this. What if all the committee members do not want a secret ballot? I get the impression that most people around here want a secret ballot, but the key is what if they do not want a secret ballot. That is fine.
It was suggested that it needs to be public. After hearing that this afternoon, it suddenly hit me that we usually vote on those committee chairs at an in camera meeting and that part is not made public anyway. It is only among us. It is among friends. What is the problem? We do not run out and say that this one did this or this one did that. If we do, usually it is because people have shared what they have done anyway and it is not a big deal.
The issue of electing the chairs should not be a big deal unless, as many of us have said today, the Prime Minister loses that plum that he uses to control members on the other side. That is not democracy. That is not what is best for the committees, it is not what is best for Parliament and it is not what is best for Canadians. I hope that we can go beyond this.
I am actually quite surprised today that we were into so much discussion and manoeuvring and with such slickness. I am really surprised to see all this happening over electing the chairs of committees. It is almost scary. It is Halloween, but that is not why it is scary. It makes me wonder why on earth the Liberal members are making such a big deal about this. I do not know why the government, as a whole, would be afraid of this.
We are choosing from two Liberals. No one is suggesting that the chair should not be a Liberal, although it would be great if that person was not necessarily a Liberal. The eight Liberals on that committee are not appointed by the opposition. They are chosen by the Liberals. Then out of those eight, they choose who will be the chair. All we are asking for is the opportunity to vote between two Liberals. They all will be on the committee anyway. It is strange.
I also heard the suggestion that it is somehow undemocratic to force people to have a secret ballot. I have to ask my colleague across the way who said that today to please take it back. It did not do the member any favours. That is the type of argument I would expect from a dictator in another country. To hear it from a democratically elected member of Parliament is unacceptable. That is really looking for an issue.
In debate today on another issue I mentioned another of the arguments the government had used as to why we could not have elected chairs, and that was that somehow the government would lose the opportunity to be democratic and fair to the genders in the country. After all, for nine years under this Prime Minister, the government has had the opportunity, if it thought gender parity was an issue on the committees, to deal with that. What was the committee structure before prorogation? There were 21 committees, with 17 men chairing.
I am not getting into the issue of whether it is good or bad or whether we should have gender parity. I am talking about the government's argument that we cannot have elected chairs because we will not have gender parity, somehow suggesting that it has been the saviour in gender parity, probably of women in Canada, when there has not been gender parity. It was another instance of where it was really digging deep to find some reason why we could not have elected chairs.
The other issue was regional representation. Again there are 12 from Ontario and the others are picked here and there along the way. It is not a good argument.
If that is the best the Liberals could do, they did not do it very well. The Canadian public will see that it has not been done very well and it will wonder why this is such a big deal. Maybe the Prime Minister needs that little plum of the extra money a committee chair makes. With that he can promise so-and-so to that committee chair if the chair does what he says and helps him keep people in line. That could be the only reason because I cannot see another one. It will not affect the government's ability to govern.
I hope that the government will see the light and that it will not be just the backbenchers who support this. I hope all government members recognize that this is not a big issue in the whole scheme of things. Let us do what is right for democracy and for parliament. Let us vote in favour of this because it is the right thing to do. We will still have our eight government members appointed to the committee. One of the eight, and I am not sure how it will be done, will be the chair. The government will not lose out on anything and it will still have a majority on the committee.
There is another thing I want to bring forward. I want to let people know about my very first experience with a committee when I came to Parliament in 1997. It was the transportation committee. Discussions were going back and forth at the committee meeting and one Liberal member who was not necessarily agreeing with the Liberal side of things. That was pretty apparent, even for me who was new to the job. One day we were to vote on an issue. When I walked into the meeting, seven of the eight Liberal members were new. Imagine my surprise. That change lasted only long enough for the vote. Then they scurried out of there and the original ones came back in again.
I have been able to figure out different ways of doing things and manoeuvring to get some important issues on the table. It is important for people to know that the opposition, with this motion, is not suggesting that we want to overthrow the right of the government. That will not happen. We support a democratic approach and we want to see things improved in Parliament.