Mr. Speaker, for the NDP, democracy is more about 33 million Canadians than just 301 MPs. There is too much concentration today on some parliamentary reform. Much of current parliamentary reform is fluff. It will not be substantive in terms of helping ordinary people in this country and members in the House. Democracy is more about what happens to the people outside of here than people right here on Parliament Hill.
I want to go over what I think the minister should be looking at in terms of what I call democratic reform. He called his package the action plan for democratic reform, but it is really about parliamentary reform. In terms of reforming the House, I like the idea of fewer confidence votes, and I certainly applaud that.
I am concerned about the enhanced role of parliamentary secretaries on parliamentary committees. I want committees to be independent. A parliamentary secretary is going to those committees with an enhanced role, reporting back to the government, and this runs the risk of the PMO having yet more control of committees than it has today. That is something we will have to watch because the goal is going in the opposite direction to what members of Parliament want to have happen.
What I want to see are the following four points.
First, in terms of democratic reform, the minister should also start looking at electoral reform. The House of Commons does not reflect the way people vote. We should be looking at various changes in the voting system. I advocate a system of proportional representation such as the majority of countries in the world have implemented. This would reflect the great diversity of Canadians. We should strike an all party committee and start looking at that process. I remind the minister that there are now five provinces looking at voting reform in their particular jurisdictions. We should be leading the pack instead of being behind it.
Second, we should look at the idea of a fixed election day as exists now in British Columbia. This would put all parties on a level playing field.
Third, we should look at bringing back enumeration. We have had all kinds of problems with the enumeration process in terms of people being left off voting lists.
Finally, the idea of lowering the voting age to 16 should also be looked at.
Those four things with regard to electoral reform would give us a more democratic country in terms of greater participation in our process.
The second major area is parliamentary reform. I have already said that I believe there should be fewer confidence votes.
Our committees should be more powerful. More resources should be given to committees. Committees should have the power to elect their own chairs, and I am glad that was mentioned in the House leader's remarks. Committees should be more independent from the government. A committee should have the power to set its own timetable and to initiate legislation.
I do not see in this parliamentary reform anything about the abolition of the unelected Senate. I wonder where that is. There is now a senator sitting in the Conservative Party. The Alliance Party has a senator sitting in its caucus. Where do those members stand? They did not support the unelected Senate, the unaccountable Senate, the undemocratic Senate. Where is that in terms of this proposal on democratic reform? It is not there.
We should give committees the power to ratify and review important decisions including appointments to the bench.
We should have a fixed budget date to assist the provinces and municipalities to plan their fiscal programs.
The power to ratify international treaties should be taken away from cabinet and given to the Parliament of Canada, including things such as the star wars treaty that is coming up.
A parliamentary vote should be required before we send our troops into the theatre of war. This is not a requirement today.
A national referendum should be required for any major constitutional change that this country might contemplate.
I agree with the minister about a code of ethics for the House, but it should apply to members of the other place as well.
We must look at our civil society when we talk about democratic reform and the minister might contemplate this in the future.
I believe that we must strengthen our freedom of information legislation.
We must implement self-government for our first nations people to give them the opportunity to have equality with the rest of the country.
Anti-scab laws and whistleblower protection must be expanded to protect the rights of Canadian workers. We must protect the right of Canadian workers to organize and the right to strike. The right to organize should apply to all workers, including workers right here on Parliament Hill.
We also must have in this country a balanced and diverse exchange of information through the media, which means: limiting the concentration of ownership of the media and the convergence of the media; providing adequate funding for the CBC; maintaining foreign ownership restrictions; and strengthening the media's right to seek information and communicate it to the public. That is very important in terms of democratic reform.
I conclude by saying that we need economic democracy with reform of global institutions such as the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the IMF. We have to get rid of Chapter 11 and the state investor clause of the NAFTA agreement. We must have stakeholder rights and participation in our pension plans. Finally, we have to strengthen corporate governance to require a greater amount of accountability by the boards of directors and the senior management of different corporations in the country.
That is an agenda for democratic reform. It is parliamentary reform. It is voting reform. These are reforms that affect our civil society and these are reforms that affect economic democracy in the country.
I urge the minister to get his mind off reforming just the House of Commons and to look at the other aspects of our democracy, to start talking about reforming them as well, and to show the courage to do something about the unelected Senate, the unelected house, that house of hacks, flacks and bagmen who have been friends of the prime ministers of our country. I see the parliamentary secretary blushing across the way. I do not think it is from sunburn. He is blushing because of the former crusade we used to go on about this particular issue.
Finally, I remind him once again, how about establishing a parliamentary committee to begin the process of voting reform with the end result of having a system of proportional representation in this country like the majority of democracies have? That is true democracy.