Mr. Chair, I wish we had the opportunity tonight to move a motion but I know we do not. However if I could I would move that tomorrow we have an experimental day with absolutely no heckling and that every member, on coming into the chamber tomorrow for question period, would post a $1,000 bond to be forfeited if he or she broke the agreement. I would just love to do that.
I imagine that right now there is not a single person in the media watching this and I would just love to watch the press gallery tomorrow. Their jaws would drop. They would wonder what was going on. We would hit the news for the new decorum in the House of Commons.
I know I cannot move the motion and I am not even sure I could get agreement if I were able to move the motion because I am not sure others would want to go along with it, but I think it would be worthwhile. I would like to see that happen.
I have a few things I want to talk about with respect to the relevance of the democratic process. The topic tonight is citizen engagement. A number of things that have been mentioned in the debate this evening really strike at the heart of the matter.
The first thing I picked up was that citizens are less involved because they are increasingly convinced that it does not really make any difference. They think they are not heard and therefore why would they waste their time. I have even spoken to some members of Parliament who have that attitude. They want to know why they should be here at 9:23 in the evening to make a speech when it really will not make a difference.
The scenario we have now for votes in the House, and one we have had for a while, is that votes taken in the House are taken by the government as advisory. I always thought that Parliament was supposed to be the final authority in the country, that it was more authoritative than even the Supreme Court of Canada. This is where the laws are made. I always was of the impression, until I became an MP, that when we had a vote here that it meant it had to be dealt with, that it had to be followed by the government and that it was binding on the government unless specifically stated that it was an advisory vote, maybe something like the debate tonight where we are here batting ideas around. There is no vote at the end of this motion. It is just a matter of debating the issues and I suppose coming up with some ideas. Will they be implemented? I do not know. I would hope so but it is not necessarily going to be so.
I have been here since 1993. One of the things that really woke me up when I was first an MP was that too often I got the impression on frequent occasions from the prime minister at that time that Parliament was nothing more than an annoyance. He had his agenda and he wanted to do things but he had to go through the hoops here and it was an annoyance. Even in question period today in answer to a question we heard a statement that the vote in the House was advisory to the government and not binding.