Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that the government House leader spoke for approximately 20 minutes, but he did not say much on the motion today. He mostly went off on grand rhetoric. Even the parts that he addressed in today's motion are incorrect.
It does not take a constitutional amendment or change to have a fixed election date. Ask the Premier of British Columbia. The day after the last election in British Columbia, he said that the next election would be four years from that date. That is no secret.
What do they do in Australia or New Zealand? Those countries have the same system of accountable, responsible government as we have. They have a fixed election date. There is no crisis. There is no problem. The government only has to stand up and agree to do it. It is the same as free votes. It is not a constitutional amendment. It is something the Prime Minister could do with the consent of the House. It is easily done. In fact, once he declares a fixed election date four years hence, nothing will change it. It would be political suicide to change it. It becomes de facto four years after the fact.
I remind the House leader that he says that we cannot change this because this is a piecemeal approach to changing the democratic deficit. I have heard both sides of the argument right from the chair in which he is sitting. Sometimes the Liberals say that we cannot change it piecemeal because we have to do it holistically. Then the next time they say that we cannot do it all at once, that it is too big a job and that we should do it piecemeal.
The ethics commissioner is one piece of legislation. This is one idea. It is a good idea. It should be supported on the basis of the one idea. It is not enough just to say that everything is wrong with it and that we have to do it all together.
I will remind him of this in closing. He talked about free votes. Last week we had free votes, again, on this side of the House on the Westbank Indian land claim, on the Armenian-Turkish issue that--