Mr. Speaker, before commenting specifically on the New Zealand experience, the member mentioned that in Russia there were something like 47 parties on the ballot, and certainly in New Zealand there are more than 30.
He seemed to be disturbed by that. It does not disturb me a bit because I believe in democracy and I believe in the right of people to get out in the public domain and promote a cause. If they can get enough people to sign up to get on the ballot, let them get on the ballot. What is he afraid of? Does he feel that he is incapable of choosing out of a list of 30 which party he wants to vote for or is he afraid that perhaps some of constituents might choose somebody other than the ones he would approve? That is democracy.
Unfortunately we see on the government side of the House the desire to suppress small parties. For years, since the minister who spoke earlier came here in 1993, as minister he has tried to suppress the smaller parties in Canada with his 50 candidate rule.
We told him over and over from this side of the House it was anti-democratic to try to prevent small parties from running by saying they had to have 50 candidates. The courts at all the lower levels told the government the same thing. However he wasted hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars fighting it all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada only to have the Supreme Court of Canada strike it down the bills he passed to suppress the activities of small parties. Even the Supreme Court of Canada told the minister that in a democratic country there is no place for that type of suppression.
What is wrong with having 40 different parties on the ballot? It is democracy and if they could all get elected to this place, so much the better. However general experience tells us that will not happen. Most of them are special interest groups that attract a few votes but they will not get into the place.
In terms of the New Zealand experience, and the dynamics in the house, actually rather than it being very polarized, I would say that most New Zealanders, certainly for the first term, complained that it was not polarized enough. They went from a very strict party type system to a more homogenous system where there was a lot of cross-voting, and it was quite different from what New Zealanders had experienced in the past. They did not like it in the first term. They seemed to prefer it in the second term, and it looks to me like MMP is there to stay in New Zealand.