Mr. Speaker, one of the good news for our party as well as for this Parliament that came out of the June 28 election was the victory of our colleague from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin. He is a distinguished colleague who attracted a lot of positive attention during his career in Quebec's National Assembly, where he held various portfolios and brilliantly discharged his duties.
Our colleague from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin can now get an inside view of the federal monster. Because of the dysfunction of the federal system we live in, many of our fellow citizens support the creation of a separate country called Quebec.
Members will agree with me that June 28 also brought about a very significant change in what I would call the geopolitical face of the House of Commons. The Liberal government, the Liberal Party of Canada, took quite a beating across the country, and particularly in Quebec, where 54 ridings out of 75 are now represented by members of my political party, that is, the Bloc Québécois.
Unfortunately, it would appear that this change of massive proportions to the Canadian political map did not register correctly with our friends across the way. On June 28, the government was punished by the voters for two reasons among others.
First, of course, is what certain commentators in English Canada called the dictatorship of the Prime Minister, in reference to the inordinate control exercised by the Prime Minister over the federal administration or the government's political community, to the point that the House had become nothing more than an instrument rubber stamping the Prime Minister's decisions. Second, the voters rejected rather dramatically this desire to centralize and standardize that is at the core of the philosophy of the Liberal Party of Canada.
Let us start with the first component, namely centralization in the hands of the Prime Minister. A great many Liberal members spoke out and met with journalists, complaining about Prime Minister Chrétien's excessive control. They said, “With the new Prime Minister—the one we have now—all this will change. We, as parliamentarians, want our responsibilities as parliamentarians and lawmakers respected by both the House of Commons and our own government, naturally”.
Where are these members now? They are not speaking out against their government's attempt to reverse a decision freely made by a committee of this House. This means that they are in favour of having their prerogatives and rights as parliamentarians restricted and, worse yet, denied and negated by their own government.
That is what we are talking about here. A parliamentary committee decides to amend a bill. Unhappy with the decision freely made by parliamentarians and law makers in committee, what does the government do? It tries to have the decision overturned by the House. What a disgrace for a government and a Prime Minister who, day after day, meeting after meeting, used to say, “We will fix the democratic deficit in this House. At long last, we will let members who deserve it have their say again”.
And what do we see? We see that members across the way are quite happy to behave like eunuchs, to let themselves be led by the government as a herd of sheep under their Prime Minister. If they valued their prerogatives as parliamentarians and law makers, they would be the first ones to rise in this House and say, “We may not agree with what happened in committee, but Parliament should work in such a way that committee decisions are respected”.
But no, they keep quiet. They stick to this vision that everything is decided by the PMO. Shame on them! But what better example of the Liberals' double speak, who say on the one hand “We want parliamentarians to be shown respect”, but who, on the other hand, agree to this petty attempt to hijack parliamentary democracy. It is so sad it makes one feel like crying.
It is rather ironic that the division of powers and the Canadian Constitution are being defended by the same people who want out of it. My colleague from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin was an activist in the Rassemblement pour l'indépendance nationale, the RIN, created in 1960 by André d'Allemagne and later headed by Marcel Chaput and then by Pierre Bourgault. This very same sovereignist-independentist movement now has to defend the division of powers under a Constitution from which it wants out, because federalists, as embodied by the Liberal Party of Canada, are ignoring their own Constitution, their own founding document, which is rather incredible.
It should not surprise us, considering that 44% of federal spending is in areas of provincial jurisdiction. Despite that, when they have an opportunity to prove that they are true federalists and not centralizers, they might well say: “We agree that provincial jurisdiction should be respected and in the case of each legislative measure that comes before us”. Maybe the House should decide to put in every bill a clause saying that provincial and federal jurisdictions have to be fully respected, in order to quell the Liberal members' appetite for centralization and uniformity.
Therefore I would invite two groups in this House to do the following. To the opposition parties I say: “Let us stick together and make sure that we have a truly democratic Parliament. Let us make sure that our rights and privileges, as members of Parliament and legislators, are respected”.
I invite my Liberal colleagues, who are listening to me intently, to rise and say to their leader, to the Cabinet members and to the Prime Minister: “We are Liberals but, above all, we are members of Parliament and legislators. We will never allow our privileges as members of Parliament and legislators to be denied, shoved aside or exchanged for a handout, such as an appointment to some position by the Prime Minister of Canada.
I will end with the following story, because I notice the presence of the former government House leader, who is a fan of Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill told the following story: “When I was a child, a circus came to my neighbourhood. In that circus, there was someone called “the boneless wonder”. My parents had refused to allow me to see that person. They thought it would be inappropriate considering my young age.” Incredibly, we have “boneless wonders” in this House: they are the Liberal members who refuse to stand up.