Mr. Speaker, I listen with a lot of interest to the member for Churchill and agree totally. If I might be so bold as to suggest the answer to the question she threw out as to why the reluctance to agree to a secret ballot. I take the member from Mississauga seriously. She has been very brave in her own party on this issue. However it boils down to control by the Prime Minister. It is as simple as that. He is a control freak. I am not using that word disrespectfully. It is a word that is commonly used. However total control is what most prime ministers seek in Parliament, even the prime minister that I represented when I was on the government side.
What I see happening, and I may be off base on this and offend the members opposite, is that the Prime Minister resembles Richard Nixon in his dying days in office when his finger was on the red button willing to push it if he had to get some attention. The red button this Prime Minister has his finger on is his constitutional right to call an election. I am sure if he has used that threat over his own members on this very issue. Most of them would not want to talk about that. However this fact remains, and I am saying this as a Progressive Conservative.
The Prime Minister could call an election today and say “four more years”. With the leadership debates taking place, with the leadership runs in at least a couple of parties over here, and maybe more, and with a split vote in opposition across the country, knowing full well that he got elected with 40% of the vote the last time, he probably would form a government. His arch rival, the former finance minister, would be on the outside, which would therefore force every one of those people to support him on this when it came to a vote on the floor of the House.
I expect the government will win this and the secret ballot will be off the agenda. The Prime Minister in this case will get his way. He will bully his way through it with the idea that his finger is on the button. The button is a snap election call.