Mr. Chair, after that speech, I feel like heckling. I really do not. I am trying to put a little levity into the debate tonight so we can stay alert and awake. The member talked about an intriguing concept, that we should be able to debate, engage in dialogue, ask questions and get answers without being heckled. I sit near the back and I always have. I have chosen a back seat and fortunately the whip in my party has always given it to me. I used to need it so I had a little more room to push my seat back. Now I do not really need the room, but I still like the bird's eye view. I can see everything. When question period takes place, frankly, even when I wear the earpiece, I cannot hear. It is despicable.
I was a high school teacher for 4 years and I taught at the college level for 27 years. I would never have tolerated that kind of behaviour in any of my classes. There were several occasions, when I was teaching at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, that I invited my students to go outside, as the Speaker does from time to time. He says that if we have something to talk about, we should go behind the curtain or into the lobby. I did that when I was an instructor at NAIT and some of my students took me up on it. I said that it was not right for them to interfere with other people's ability to concentrate.
When I was first elected in 1993 with a number of my colleagues in the then Reform Party, one of the things we tried to do was restore some dignity to Parliament. The member was not here then but some of the others were. They may recall that we sat here as respectfully as we possibly could and the media started putting out statements saying that we were a totally ineffective, unanimated, disengaged opposition.
I kept hearing the phrase “ineffective opposition”, and some people still believe it. I remember talking to someone, and I cannot divulge the name because the person is an apolitical House of Commons staffer. That person said that he thought it was the first time in many decades that Parliament had a real opposition because we had come here with some new, challenging ideas on how to do things differently. He said that this had not happened until then. It was a matter of the parties changing sides from time to time in terms of who was the government and who was the opposition.
There we were with that dilemma. We were getting the public persona that we were ineffective because we were not yelling and screaming like everybody else. Now I do not know. Maybe now we are being too effective. By that definition, perhaps we are. I personally do not like it.
I was telling some people in my riding the other day about the one thing I resisted, and I have several witnesses here. In all my years in Parliament, which is now a little over 11, with very few exceptions, I have not engaged in the heckling, yelling and so forth. I have to say with very few exceptions because sometimes I just could not help it. Now it is very commonplace. I wish we could do something about it. I appreciate what the member is saying.
Sometimes I have thought we should be running this place like the boardroom of a major corporation. It would never be tolerated there. We should be able to put out ideas. We have a dilemma. If a member puts out an idea, all of a sudden that member is accused of it being party policy. One has to be very careful what one thinks and says. It is very constricting.
I would like the member's comments on how we could achieve that and somehow sell to the public that we are now doing our jobs better than we did before.