Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Pictou--Antigonish--Guysborough. Many of our members want to speak and I will keep my remarks very short.
The member for St. John's West made a comment concerning the business of the country. It is really a shame that we have to go through this debate on what we would consider the most democratic issue to come before these committees in a long time, that is, the secret ballot to choose committee chairmen.
I agree with many of the members who spoke before me that it has nothing to do with party politics. Many of us on this side of the House recognize the good work done in the majority of committees by government members who are the chairs. We are not talking about opposition members suddenly becoming committee chairmen. That point has been emphasized in the House all day. It has nothing to do with who wins that secret ballot.
On many occasions opposition members are going to vote for a government member to be the committee chairman because some of them have really mastered the art of running a committee and they are very good at it. We have acknowledged that.
Basically it comes down to the principle of whether we are going to democratize this institution called Parliament. In the last number of years we have often used a phrase around this place, but there is a democratic deficit here in Parliament and this is one example of it.
The question is, why is the Prime Minister so reluctant to allow the chairman of a committee to be elected by secret ballot? I go back to some of the interventions we have heard earlier this day. It simply comes back to the Prime Minister wanting absolute control over Parliament.
We do have the rules of Parliament that allow me to get up and disagree with the Prime Minister. In fact most of us on this side of the House get up on a routine basis and disagree with the Prime Minister. It comes down to some of the other things that he or future prime ministers can do and they are very reluctant to give up anything.
Mr. Speaker, I think we came to this place at the same time, the difference being of course that you have survived more elections than I have. We came to this place in 1988, just after the McGrath commission. You will remember, Mr. Speaker, the person who was sitting in the chair where you are today was the first Speaker ever elected by secret ballot in the House.
Believe it or not, successive prime ministers had rejected the notion of an elected Speaker of the House of Commons, which is quite bizarre when we think about it. In fact, the Prime Minister of the day, Mr. Mulroney, rejected the idea when he first came to Parliament. It was almost two years after being here that he agreed that we should do it.
To be very honest, aside from the recommendations of the McGrath committee I think one of the reasons we moved to that is the Prime Minister and his government got into some difficulty with the Speaker that had been chosen by the Prime Minister in 1984. It was a convenient way to move it over to a secret ballot in the House. Mr. Fraser became our first elected Speaker, the Speaker who was here when you, Mr. Speaker, and I were sworn in and the first Speaker that you rose in the House to speak to.
That was a raging debate at the time. I know a prime minister that every one of us in the House has a lot of respect for, regardless of what side we sit on, was former Prime Minister Trudeau. He was absolutely against any suggestion of an elected Speaker.
The question that I would throw out to our colleagues is, has that hurt Parliament or has it helped Parliament in the functioning of Parliament and the debate back and forth in the House? I would say that it has helped Parliament.
There is a sense of independence that you as Speaker now can exercise knowing full well that you have the collective support of the House. I think it gives more authority to you as the Speaker and to your other colleagues who sit in that chair on a day to day basis. In a sense, they are not threatened by the Prime Minister in terms of that position.
I would use that same argument when it comes to committees. The committees in this place do good work. Unfortunately a lot of that good work is shelved because it does not fit in with the government's agenda. Sometimes committees are accused of doing busy work. I can remember this from our early days here. Committees sometimes in the past were accused of being organized in such a fashion that they kept backbench members of the government party busy so there would never be an idle member of Parliament. We have seen some of that as well, but there is no question, and there are members surrounding me as I speak, that members have been on committees that have done exceptionally good work. We have seen many examples of that in this place.
I think we should take a completely serious look at this. I think the Prime Minister should take a second look. I am a little concerned about the state of mind of the Prime Minister. I am quite serious when I say this, and I do not say it disrespectfully, but all of the same signs were displayed in the personality of Richard Nixon in the dying days of his administration. I know that sounds cold and cruel, but I do not think he is functioning as capably as he did a couple of years ago. The Prime Minister is under tremendous pressure. This can be seen and is carried out on the faces and the expressions of the members opposite. There is a great deal of tension that his own colleagues are under. There is certainly division on the other side of the House in terms of what should happen, secret ballot or no secret ballot, power in the Prime Minister's Office or power to the elected members.
We come down for the principle of democracy. We are elected to the House to do our best and represent the people who put us here, to the best of our ability. Most of us on any given day fall down three or four times, but the truth is the majority of us do our best day in and day out.
I think one of the best things we could do for this place is to address that idea of a democratic deficit head on. We must take it on and show the Canadian people that we are willing to do something about it. I would hope that the Prime Minister would be in agreement with us. It is never too late to change one's mind. I guess eventually this will be coming to a vote on the floor of the House of Commons and I would hate to think that the government members would be, as we say, whipped into doing what the Prime Minister wants them to do.
Let us hope that it can change and that it will change, and at the end of the day we will be beneficiaries of a system that truly reflects the will of the Chamber.