Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-408 today because it raises vitally important issues of democratic governance that no member of the House should hesitate to confront: How do we balance our roles as parliamentarians with those of party members?
The development of a national party system affected Canadian democracy in fundamental ways. It spawned a new dynamic in the way we do democracy. It created a new terminology in political studies and it enlarged the power and responsibilities of parties as democratic institutions.
Parties were a major player in transforming Canada, from colonial rule to an independent democracy based on responsible government. However, at the same time, we must monitor our institutions to appropriately accommodate concepts such as party solidarity, party loyalty and party discipline. We must always ensure that our ties to the party continue to be a means of enhancing our responsibility to the people rather than diluting it.
In short, parties make our jobs more complex, but it is this complexity that can be used for the good of democracy. The greatest danger would be to oversimplify our role as parliamentary players in this system because it would prevent proper scrutiny of how parties affect that role. This is why Bill C-408 is important to debate.
As I see it, the greatest oversimplification that government observers fall prey to is the simple reduction of democracy to a vote. The vote is essential and fundamental to democracy, but democracy is so much more, as are our relationships to our constituents and our role as members of Parliament.
Democracy is complex and multi-faceted, and the party system adds another layer to this analysis. Parties have the unique ability to enhance and fortify democratic representation, but a well mediated balance must be obtained so they do not supercede it. Let me explain what I mean.
Often it seems to me democracy gets boiled down to a vote. First, the vote cast at the ballot box and second, the vote that MPs make standing in the House. However, it does a disservice to characterize our mandate as deriving solely from that first vote or our role as encompassing merely that second vote. We do too much here and our constituents expect far more for that to be true. We are advocates, deliberators, debaters, strategizers, coalition builders, mediators, legislators and more.
Were it otherwise, we would need to return to the ballot box every time a policy was debated that was not presented to voters during the election campaign. We would need a byelection every time a new and pressing national issue faced the country. We would no longer be a representative of democracy but a group of spokesmen. The capacity to govern the country would be undermined because a unified voice on every issue simply does not exist in a nation as diverse and as complex as Canada.
In this way, parties provide an invaluable means of making representative democracy effective. Were we simply delegates to the constituents, then nothing would be done in the national interest because each MP would be purely focused on re-election rather than representing. The truth is our party affiliation does play a significant role in voter choice, and this is a good thing. It expresses the national direction that voters want their representatives to take when they arrive here in Parliament.
Again, it is a balance. To be purely a party delegate is not good for democracy either. Constituents must have a voice and a role in their government. Their responsibility does not end at the ballot box either. They are our ultimate line of accountability and their engagement is vital to a healthy democracy.
The party system provides a useful means of organizing and consolidating information, but the relationship between the voters and the MP is a primary one. Of necessity, this relationship must continue in our constituency work and in the day to day functioning of Parliament.
The core principle of elected representation is that our work only begins with winning a seat in the House. More than being voted in as part of a party slate, our role is to continually be responsive to local concerns, communicating parliamentary developments back to constituents, and working continuously and tirelessly to keep Canadians engaged with their government.
The House schedule is premised on the reality that we each have significant constituency duties at our riding offices and that we have time to speak with and get to know the people in our ridings. This indispensable and invaluable role is performed generally apart from party affiliation because we represent the whole constituency, not just fellow party members.
The Lortie Commission on electoral reform characterized these competing roles very eloquently when it rejected the idea of a recall mechanism for parliamentarians. In its words:
In Canada's system of parliamentary government, MPs are not elected as representatives who randomly come together in a national legislature simply to advance the views and interests of their constituents on matters of national policy. Rather, the House of Commons is a collective decision-making and representative institution that must weigh the competing interests of citizens against the national interest. The weakness in the argument that recall should be used against individual MPs who do not take direct instructions from their constituents is that MPs who isolate themselves from the collective deliberation of public policies will be less equipped to represent their constituents, not more so.
In short, Bill C-408 raises important issues of party politics and representative democracy, but it responds to them by falling prey to both extremes of oversimplification.
First, it presumes that MPs are members of parties first and foremost, rather than representatives of their ridings. Second, it assumes that voting is the only means of democratic expression and engagement in the relationship between MPs and their constituents. As a result, adopting Bill C-408 would upset the balance between the representative democracy and party politics we currently have, creating the conditions for an ineffective and unstable governing system.
MPs seek office for a single overriding reason: they want to do good. Often this means joining a political party because doing the most good is easier in a group of dedicated individuals with the same aspirations and ideas for bettering the country. Should changes in circumstances, policies or people mean that a member's and party's ideas of the good no longer coincide, then the member has a difficult choice to make. In the event the decision leads to leaving the party, then to legislatively prohibit such a result would realign the basic building blocks of our representative democracy.
Notably, the official opposition's party platform explicitly states that it would not endorse any electoral system changes that would weaken the link between members of Parliament and their constituents or that will strengthen the control of the party machinery over individual members of Parliament. Ironically, in just two pages, the opposition member does exactly that in Bill C-408.
No one understands better than the governing party that party solidarity is an important asset in maintaining the stability and responsibility of government. In addition, however, no one more than the government wants to ensure the continual renewal of the Canadian democracy. In the complex project of democracy, this must include maintaining an appropriate balance between party politics and voter representation.
May I sum up that Bill C-408 seeks to upset this balance by oversimplifying our roles and responsibilities. It replaces the traditions of party solidarity and discipline with a strict centralization of power with the party executive. Parties should serve to support the democratic functioning of Parliament and not hinder it. This is the responsibility of each of us to ensure. This is why Bill C-408 should not be supported.