Madam Speaker, my party has raised this issue at length, as have members from all political parties because it goes to the heart of our job. We obviously oppose what the government is doing because the ethics commissioner will not be truly independent as the government has mentioned.
The ethics commissioner will be chosen by the Prime Minister and ratified by the House. On the surface one may think that would be appropriate. The Prime Minister certainly has the right to appoint individuals, but the ethics commissioner is someone entirely different. The ethics commissioner will be a watchdog over all of us, including the Prime Minister.
The reason this came about is the number of debacles that have occurred with respect to cabinet ministers, some of whom have been forced to leave because of a breach in ethics.
The fact is that this institution needs firm guidelines on what we can and cannot do. All MPs would like that. If we know what the rules are, then we know what we can and cannot do. Intuitively we already know that. All of us on this side of the House are asking for an independent ethics commissioner, one not appointed by the Prime Minister, but one perhaps chosen from outside or a group of people chosen by cabinet who would then be ratified by the House in a secret ballot. In that way we could prevent the application of the Westminster type system, the whip system, which presently occurs in the House and which prevents individuals from voting their conscience and doing the right thing. I would like to expand on that thought.
Notwithstanding health care, the economy, the job losses that people have endured, the lack of support for education, the lack of support for our seniors, the lack of opportunity we have compared to other countries, notwithstanding all of those issues, the biggest problem we have is that we have an elected dictatorship in Canada. With so much power centred in the Prime Minister's Office, it prevents members across party lines from doing their job.
All of us in the House have talents, passions and desires. They are why we came to the House and what we wanted to do when we arrived here. We wanted to accomplish things for our constituents and for all Canadians. That is what Canadians want. They have asked us to come here. They pay our salaries to do their bidding. We are their public servants, but when we get here can we actually do what they ask? Can we fulfill that expectation? The tragic answer is no.
The Westminster system has been bastardized in Canada. We have a system where the Prime Minister's Office has so much power that even the Prime Minister's own cabinet members are unable to fulfill what they think needs to be done and what their respective departments think needs to be done. Cabinet takes its marching orders from people in the Prime Minister's Office, most of whom are unelected. Power is being wielded by unelected people. That is not a democracy. We have an executive with virtually unrestrained power. We have the worst of the presidential system and the worst of the Westminster system. An uncontrolled executive is not good for the country, it is not good for the House and it is not good for the executive itself.
The problems the Prime Minister and his cabinet are facing are in many ways a result of the structure created by the Prime Minister. He has uncontrolled power. The ability to encourage different viewpoints and have those viewpoints fleshed out in a manner that enables the best ideas to percolate to the top is absent. When there is an uncontrolled executive where contrary views do not act as a check and balance on what the Prime Minister and his people want to do, it creates not only an unhealthy situation but an entirely damaging situation for our nation, for the House and for the executive. If we look back in history, any time there was power centralized to such a degree among so few people, it created a situation rife with problems.
Many of our country's problems have not been dealt with in a meaningful fashion. There has also been an erosion of our country's democratic institutions and potential. Rather than doing what we are capable of and aiming high, we as a nation are shooting low. That is a violation of ourselves as individuals and worse, it is a violation of the people of our country.
We have not tapped into the potential in the House and the potential of our nation and indeed the potential of our public service to bring all those good minds together, to apply those minds to the problems of our nation. If all members of the House looked into their hearts, they would have to agree with that analysis. However, things can be done.
The prime minister in waiting, if I can call him that, has spoken about the democratic deficit. The democratic deficit must be dealt with. If it is not, then we will not see action on health care to ensure that Canadians get access to better health care. We will not decrease our unemployment. We will not increase salaries. We will not release the potential of our private sector. We will not improve the education system in Canada. We will not have better relations between the feds and the provinces. We will not have more efficient government. We will not see the reform of the public sector that is so desperately needed. None of that is going to happen because the great minds in our country cannot apply their ideas to those pressing problems.
If whoever takes the helm of this country chooses to deal with that democratic deficit, that person would leave a mark and a legacy that would be remembered for many, many years to come. It would be the most significant change our country has seen in decades. That is something that whoever takes over the helm in the future may give pause for thought.
It will not be good enough to merely pay lip service to this in the time up to when that person is chosen. It will not be good enough to speak about it in generalities. The only thing that will be good enough is if that person gives specific solutions to deal with the democratic deficit of our country so that we will reform our system and change it from an elected dictatorship to a true democracy. That is our duty as individuals and it is the duty of the Prime Minister.
Think of what we could do if that changed. Think of what we would have if we had free votes in the House of Commons, true free votes done in an electronic system like it is done in many other countries. Developing countries have an electronic voting system that is efficient, timely, cost saving, effective and democratic. A person's voting record could be released when a writ is dropped. The person's constituents would know how that person voted on various bills.
Reform of the committee system is needed. It is no longer acceptable for committees merely to be make work projects for MPs. No longer is it acceptable for the government to use taxpayers' money to merely keep MPs running around and around in circles doing studies that nobody listens to. No longer is it effective and worthy for the government to tolerate a system that merely makes the vast majority of the people in this House run around like chickens with their heads cut off, and do not use the good work that they have done.
There is tremendous potential in the House. Much of it is drawn from the constituents who brought us here. All of us use the ideas that our constituents give us. We bring them to the House. What if those ideas were able to have life? What if those ideas were employed as public policy, even as a pilot project? Imagine what we could do as a nation domestically. Imagine what we could do internationally.
I have given some suggestions that my party and members from across party lines have put forward. We can only hope that the government listens for the collective good of all of us.