Debates of May 3rd, 2005

Citizen Engagement

[Ken Boshcoff, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Mr. Chair, the member for Scarborough--Rouge River, who has written a history of many of these changes that have gone through the parliamentary process, is the author of this riveting book on the changes that have occurred. If the member has seen it in action, then we must know that it can be done. I really think it can only enhance each and every party member and each and every representative here in terms of the way our constituents view us and other nations view us.

I cannot believe it could get any worse. As a first term MP I share some of the disillusionment of coming into a place where I really expected that I would be able to hear someone speaking without having to plug into a machine.

I like the idea from soccer but in here it might be more of a checkered flag. However just that suggestion tells me that many of us are thinking the same thing, and that is that it has to be better than this. I truly think that if we were to put our minds to it, it could work. I cannot see any Canadian citizen disagreeing with us.

[Ken Epp, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

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.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Some are.

[Ken Epp, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

The member opposite just said that some are. I find this incredible because we have had supply day motions that have passed but which the government has chosen to ignore.

I think for example of the vote that we held after debate and after due consideration on dividing foreign affairs and international trade into two separate departments. We talked with a number of different individuals on that issue and there were a number of them, including people within the department, who said that it was not a good idea because foreign affairs and international trade were intricately intertwined.

As a result, after listening to those debates, the majority of the members in this House came to the reasoned conclusion that it was not a good idea to separate those departments and the motion was defeated. The government members said that they did not care because they were going to do it anyway.

Why should we ask our citizens to become involved? Why should they go to the work of being involved in elections, in campaigns, in raising funds to buy signs, in doing the literature, in helping on the phone banks and in making literature drops when after the candidate they are working for gets elected, comes here, debates and thinks through the issues, votes in accordance with the conclusions logically reached, and the government says “nyah-nyah, nyah-nyah, we are not going to do it anyway”. I do not know how they are going to put that into Hansard . I guess they could show that the member spoke with some sarcasm.

However it is really very disconcerting to the people who are watching this and it is disconcerting to me as an MP. If we have a debate and a vote and we lose it, so be it, as long as it is a free and open debate. Too often in this place and in committees I have been involved in debates and have put forward a solid argument. I taught for 31 years and I know body language. I knew when students understood what I was teaching and I knew when they were confused without having to ask them. If they were confused I would try a different approach and explain it in a different way.

It happened on more than one occasion in committees when we had the majority Liberal government where I know that I persuaded other members of the committee to my point of view because I had a logical and defensible position. However when it came to vote they voted against my amendment to the bill. I asked one member why he had voted against my amendment and he shrugged his shoulders and said that he really did not have a choice. That is despicable. It is a great deterioration of democracy and we ought not to tolerate it. Why not have a free vote? If the majority came to the conclusion that this was better, we would end up with better laws in this country on behalf of the citizens who sent us here.

I find it very troubling that people who make these decisions on how they are going to vote are very often making those decisions in isolation and often were not present to hear the debate. I cannot imagine that they have time to read all the blues from all the committees, let alone the Hansard from this House. They did not even hear the arguments and they stand their ground and we end up with laws that are less than the best on behalf of our citizens.

I think of other examples where we voted in the House contrariwise, for example, on the appointment of Mr. Murray from Winnipeg to the environment position. We voted to set up a trust fund to receive in trust, as lawyers receive money in trust, tainted money that was inadvertently received by the Liberal Party. There is a lot of evidence for that. I do not think the government will set up such a trust fund. We have basically been told that.

There has to be a mechanism also in Parliament for us to defeat bills and motions without it being a confidence vote.

I was the founding chairman of a school board of a private school. The board members were thoughtful, hardworking people. We all worked long hours for no pay. When we were setting up the school, there were more meetings that lasted from seven or eight at night until midnight to the point where some of us had to be reintroduced to our families because they did not recognize us.

Many motions were put forward. Often the motion sounded good, but then one person would say, “Ah, but think about this”, and another one would say, “Yes, and what if we pass this motion and this happens?” After a while the chair would say “Okay, all those in favour should raise their hands”. It happened on several occasions where even the person moving the motion did not vote for it in the end because he was enlightened by the input from other people present who were thinking about these issues. Then we defeated the motion. We did not say, “Oh, no, now we are in such trouble. We will have to have an election now to see whether we can be re-elected because we defeated a motion”.

One of the huge flaws in this place is that we do not have the right as members of Parliament to defeat in a free vote a bad bill, a bad motion, a bad amendment. We would actually be doing the citizens of this country a service by not putting into law a bad idea. We would then have many good ideas. That is what I would like to see happen.

There should be a rule in the House that says no minority government or whatever would be defeated, except by a specific motion of non-confidence, which could be made at any time by any member of the House. It would not be used frivolously. When would we say that we have lost confidence in the government? Only when the majority of the members of the House would agree.

I could really go on for another hour or two but I know that the rules will not permit it and I do want to be cognizant of the rules and obey them. I hope that someone has some good questions for me.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Chair, I want to ask a question of the member who is famous for his mathematical moments.

I am sort of switching gears between his great passion for how the House works to my great passion for electoral reform. I want to mention one of the problems that seems to occur in systems other than our current system. Our system has the great virtue of extreme simplicity. We vote for a bunch of people and whoever gets the most votes wins, whether or not he or she has 50% of the votes. Just or unjust, it is certainly comprehensible. Other systems almost always wind up involving some level of complexity. Frequently they require vote allocations based on formulas, usually named after the person who came up with it. The Sainte-Laguë formula is used in New Zealand and the Droop formula, named after Mr. Droop who invented it, is used in Australia.

For those who are not as passionate about the peculiarities of mathematics, does this kind of thing lead to a problem? If voters do not know, if voters cannot see easily the results of what they are doing, is there a danger that they will lose the kind of interest and passion that the member has? Perhaps not all of us or perhaps not all of the citizens share the same enthusiasm. Is there a danger that we could not win? Are there other suggestions he has as to how to boost the interest and engagement of voters in the whole system?

[Ken Epp, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Mr. Chair, the first past the post system is simple. The Deputy Prime Minister won by two votes. On the night of October 25, 1993 the official announcement indicated that she had received two votes more than her nearest competitor who happened to be running for my party. After the recount I believe she had won by 11 or 12 votes. It was a very narrow race. She is one perfect example of having won with less than 50% of the vote by a fair amount and very close to the others.

There is a danger that those who voted for one of the other candidates, and particularly the people who voted for my friend who ran for our party, had some disillusionment. They had worked so hard. They tried so hard. They came so close, but received nothing.

I do not know if you, Mr. Chair, have ever run in a physical race. I was in a 50 mile bicycle race. Just by looking at me people can tell I am rather athletic. There were gold, silver and bronze medals so at least the top three received something for their efforts. There should be some way of recognizing the votes of the other people who did not vote for the candidate who won.

The model which I like the best in terms of a proportional system is, believe it or not, the first past the post system. The person representing the riding should be the individual who received more votes than anybody else, even if it is a squeaker. If that person wins the race then he should receive the gold because he came in first. The other votes should then be allocated to, say, a provincial number and used for members at large to represent that point of view. That is the model I am leaning toward.

The other model is the preferential ballot where a single ballot is used to indicate a person's first, second and third choice and so on. Nowadays with computers it would be relatively easy to run those things off. The individual with the lowest number of votes would be knocked off and all of those ballots would be applied to the second choice. This would continue until somebody received a clear majority. That would be my second choice.

There are definitely ways of doing this. We would certainly engage more citizens in a meaningful way if, when they cast their ballots and expressed their ideas, they knew they would have a greater influence in the House of Commons.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Deputy Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Chair, I must respond to some of the comments made by the member for Edmonton--Sherwood Park, especially his reference to the department of external affairs and international trade being split. I am not debating the merit or the lack of merit of that proposition.

The member said he hoped that the House could defeat bills without causing a general election. We have already had two examples of that. There were two government bills in front of the House causing that department to be split in two. Both bills were defeated in the House. It did not cause an election. That is an example of the two line voting system that we have instituted for ourselves.

He indicated that the government did not pay heed to the will of the House. I would have to disagree in the sense that the government received mixed signals. The House had authorized expenditures for the two departments as being split. It was only subsequent to that when the two bills were defeated. Since then the government has been taking stock of the situation and looking at the options, and it is to come back to the House. That is an example of the House speaking not in an advisory way but telling the government to take note, and it did.

There are different ways and levels for the House to speak and when it speaks through legislation the government must adhere to that. With our system being a bicameral system, legislation needs to be passed by both Houses. When it is a motion it may very well be an advisory matter, and in some cases the government takes advice and in other cases it does not. That is not to say there is a lack of respect. Whenever the House uses its legislative will and expresses it through law, there is no government that would not listen to that.

[Ken Epp, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Mr. Chair, I should begin with an apology. I believe I called the member a parliamentary secretary. I got his title wrong. He is a minister and I should acknowledge that. My apologies for that.

I would like to respond to what he is saying. I think that the point I was making was that in question period when a question was asked today, and I do not even remember the issue but it was from the NDP, the answer was given that it was just advisory, yet there was a motion. It was passed by this House. It was a majority. It is supposed to be a democracy and that is what I was referring to. I find it somewhat frustrating that the government does not bind itself to the decisions in the House.

The one which strikes me as particularly important right now is the one from some years ago when this House, by an overwhelming majority, voted to retain the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. The end of that motion said “and that Parliament will take all steps necessary to preserve that definition”. That motion passed here resoundingly, yet when various lower courts ruled opposite to the wishes of the House on that particular matter, the government failed to challenge that at a higher level of the courts, which I think it should have been obliged to do as a result of having passed that motion. That is one that has been brought up to me many times, because there are very many people in this country who believe very passionately about this definition of marriage. It has really grabbed the attention of the people.

While I am up on that issue, I want to very quickly bring up the number of representations we have had and the petitions that have been presented in this House on that issue as well. That is another example where people can rightly ask whether they should bother doing these things. They do not seem to make a difference. If we ever had a place where Parliament would react positively to something like that and back off from an agenda if it is going in the wrong direction, I think that would certainly enhance people's trust in Parliament and people's involvement because they would know that what they are doing and saying is making a difference.

Not being heard eventually makes one become very quiet. I could tell a joke here about a man who got that from his wife but that would be inappropriate. If people are never heard, never listened to, they soon stop talking. That is what I think has happened to many of our electorate.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Chair, as the parliamentary secretary responsible for democratic reform, I am very pleased to rise in this take-note debate on citizen engagement. It is certainly not a new issue, but it is becoming more relevant to Canadians. It is an area where there is room for a lot of improvement, too.

I would like to take this opportunity to examine three key aspects of public participation, three aspects we must bear in mind in our discussions of the issue. I would first like to speak about the importance of public participation in democratic governance and public accountability.

Second, I would like to speak about the effect real public participation has on the relationship between government and the people. Engagement presupposes a different relationship, one in which people are not considered passive users of services, but one in which elected officials still play a key role in decision making.

Finally, I would like to look briefly at certain challenges and reservations sometimes expressed when discussing increased citizen participation in policy development.

The importance of citizen participation in keeping democracy healthy and strong is the first reason for valuing it. In Canada, as elsewhere, the significant decrease in voter turnout in elections in recent years, especially among young people, is forcing us to look at what appears to be a more general lack of public interest in public affairs. Many western democracies, in fact, are increasingly concerned over the drop in public participation in volunteer work and political activities, and not just in the election process.

Although it is hard to separate cause and effect, it is easy to conclude that a lack of interest in the election process is the product of a more general decline in community participation. In the absence of active Canadians knowledgeable about political processes and issues, we will probably see a weakening of our democratic institutions. The more informed Canadians committed to the political debate we have, the more vigorous our democracy will be. In this sense, public participation is important, because it allows Canadians to fulfil their duty as citizens.

In the past, it was often a question of our rights. We do not take interest in our responsibilities often enough. In Canada, although people are increasingly aware of their rights—since the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in particular—we should become more interested in the issue of citizen responsibility.

Citizen engagement contributes to improving the quality of government policies and it ensures that public interest policies take into account the needs and aspirations of Canadians. By providing citizens opportunities to take part in policy development, we are ensuring that these government decisions are based on the acknowledged preference of citizens. For the most part, that is what it means to have a democratic government.

The participation of citizens in policy development is important because it encourages individuals to think about public interest in a broader sense. Rather than restricting the focus to a particular group, the citizen engagement process, especially the deliberative type, encourages individuals to take common interests into account.

This dialogue allows the public to understand the challenges from different perspectives, including those of people from different regions and of different ethnicities, genders and religions. In fact, when the public raises concerns in a public forum, they often feel obliged to speak, not in their own interests, but in the interests of their community or their country.

In terms of the process, public participation can make it easier to determine common interests, which may serve as a basis for negotiations and which may increase the feeling of belonging and responsibility for results. This increases the legitimacy and acceptance of the process.

Additionally, the proceedings may complement the activities of the major advocacy groups or lobbyists. By promoting direct public participation, governments can better understand the needs and hopes of the general public.

This brings me to another issue, which I raised at the outset, namely, the fact that citizens are increasingly seeking a different type of relationship between themselves and government.

As University of Toronto professor Neil Nevitte pointed out some time ago, there has been a decline of deference among Canadians. Citizens are no longer willing to be passive figures in relation to authority figures. Increasingly, Canadians wish to play a much more active role in relation to their elected representatives.

The government-citizen relationship has grown more complex, with citizens demanding a greater voice in policy development, either individually or through advocacy organizations in civil society. Ministers and elected officials need to be actively in touch with citizens rather than simply seeing them as passive clients demanding services.

This demand for a new government-citizen relationship not only means more citizen consultation, but also a different way of engaging citizens that goes beyond the traditional narrow consultation exercise. While public opinion polls tells us consistently that citizens overwhelmingly indicate a great desire to be involved, they also demonstrate that Canadians have a low level of confidence that what they have to say matters much in the end. There is a sense that the involvement of citizens in policy development is done in a superficial manner, where a policy direction has already been taken in advance.

While studies clearly tell us that citizens wish to have a greater and more meaningful say in policy making, it is important to point out that ultimately citizens want their elected representatives to make final decisions. In other words, greater citizen participation transforms and, in my view, reinforces representative democracy. It does not negate it.

The demand for greater and improved means of citizen engagement is not without challenges. Beyond the benefits of citizen engagement, a number of concerns have been raised about involving citizens that I would like to address.

First, it has been argued that citizen engagement processes are just too expensive. The argument is that the money would be better spent on programs that directly affect the well-being of Canadians.

My response is that, yes, it is true that citizen engagement processes require significant funding. Real engagement exercises do require considerable time and resources. However, my understanding is that the overall cost of all citizen consultation and engagement is a tiny fraction of total government expenditures. Moreover, this fraction of government expenditures is more than justified if it enables MPs and the Government of Canada to reach out to citizens, to determine their needs and aspirations and to craft appropriate policy responses.

Another argument against citizen engagement is that it can tie the hands of the government, reducing its flexibility, particularly in the context of negotiations, and make it difficult to achieve policy reforms.

Concerns are sometimes raised, moreover, that citizens are unable to think through the difficult trade-offs that must often be made and increase the pressure on governments to take decisions that simply appeal to the lowest possible denominator.

While it is true that engaging citizens in policy development can reduce flexibility if a clear consensus emerges for a given approach to a problem, this is not necessarily a problem. If there is a clear consensus as to a solution to a problem, the government has an obligation to listen. If it chooses an alternative approach, it has an obligation to offer a publicly justifiable rationale.

Regarding the difficulty of trade-offs, one of the benefits of some new citizen engagement techniques is that they allow for citizens to discuss among themselves the choices they would make in a situation of competing priorities.

A final concern that is often raised is that it can be time consuming and could, in the extreme, paralyze governments. My response to this concern is that engaging citizens can be done in a variety of ways.

For some issues it will be important to have an extended citizen engagement process. The Romanow Commission on the Future of Health Care engagement process lasted for a number of months. However, not all engagement processes need to be large. In some cases, smaller, targeted processes can be extremely effective.

I will close by saying that, clearly, there are numerous excellent reasons to encourage public participation in policy development. Although significant progress in this area has been made over the past few years, we must multiply our efforts to reach Canadians.

Ministers and departments clearly have the obligation to improve their efforts to encourage public participation. In addition to what the ministers are doing, parliamentarians have a fundamental responsibility to speak with their constituents on government policy issues.

I am eager to hear what other parliamentarians have to say about this.

[Ken Epp, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Mr. Chair, the member talked about the fact that people are frustrated, according to the polls, because they have not been convinced that their input is actually listened to and heard. I think the only way to correct that is to actually respond to people.

I can see no reason in the world why, for example, when thousands and thousands of people sign petitions, we simply present them in the House and ship them off to a warehouse. We should do much better than that. We need to actually respond to them, especially when they are overwhelming on certain issues.

I would like to know how the member can justify making a statement that citizens are not heard and not also say that we need to do something to actually hear them.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Mr. Chair, I would like to respond by saying that petitions in fact are responded to by the government. It is up to every member of Parliament to then do what they want with them.

In my own case, I have had petitions responded to and I have forwarded the responses to the interest groups that forwarded them to me. I would think that it is basically the responsibility of the MP. The member, if not satisfied with the answer, should try to get more information from the government. That is the member's responsibility.The government does have a responsibility to react within three months, I believe. We do this all the time. As a member of the House leader's team, I have the opportunity to respond to petitions on almost a daily basis.

I would say it is the responsibility of every MP to ensure that the responses from the government are forwarded to their constituents. If they are not happy with the answer, I believe they have an opportunity to come back to the government for further responses.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Chair, the hon. member spoke eloquently about the issue of democratic reform. One of the questions that always occurs to me when we discuss the issue of democratic input into governance is how it affects our policies with respect to internationalists.

When the tsunami crisis occurred, there was a massive outpouring of support for and assistance to the people who had been devastated by that natural disaster. It was forced upon the government to respond to that outpouring. Reluctantly, the government did respond after some period of time.

I visited one of the tsunami affected regions. I visited both southwestern Sri Lanka and northern Sri Lanka and of course the capital, Colombo. When we told people about the enormous sum of money that had been expended on reconstruction aid by the Canadian government and other governments, a lot of them wondered where all of that money had actually gone. That strikes me as an absence of democratic accountability.

Canadians know that hundreds of millions of their dollars from charitable and government levels were spent on this project of reconstruction in tsunami affected regions, and we still do not know how all of those dollars have been expended. Many people in my riding who are of Sri Lankan origin are demanding to know where those dollars went and how they have been expended. This is something that I do not believe this government has accounted for effectively enough, particularly with the allegations that have been revealed in east Asia of international aid dollars, not just Canadian dollars, having gone missing, dollars having been misspent and results not having been achieved for the people who are suffering most.

I wonder if the hon. member could rise in the House of Commons and explain how when it comes to international aid, for example, we can be more democratically accountable to the Canadian people in explaining where their tax dollars are spent and how those results are actually achieved. Perhaps he can elaborate in particular on the Sri Lankan tsunami disaster.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Mr. Chair, actually I find it very unfortunate that probably the last question in the House tonight is a very partisan one. We have had extremely good discussions this evening on these issues. We put forward the debate this evening to try to get input from parliamentarians of all parties to see how we can improve democratic reform and how we can advance with this issue.

I am trying to tie the member's question into citizen engagement and I think maybe there is a possibility that we can do it. As a matter of fact, I feel that the government actually responded very aggressively in the days immediately following the tsunami event. The Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs reacted within a day or two.

I think Canadians were engaged in the sense that they asked us to invest more money in tsunami aid. I believe that in this case Canadians had a huge impact on the government investing more funds and I believe that we did react to it. I think that in a sense it was an excellent way, where Canadians did get involved and government reacted to it. I think it is totally normal for us to do that.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Chair, so that we do not finish on a completely partisan note, I have a concern and a reform that I would like to see. It has been proposed by our party and comes from the experience of the member for Ottawa Centre who has had many years in the House. It concerns appointments. A great deal of government policy is both developed and deployed by appointments.

Our party has proposed a methodology for appointments that would take into account the criteria of merit, that a person knows what they are doing for the appointment that they are being considered for. There would be some kind of meaningful review at the parliamentary committee level.

I am wondering if the parliamentary secretary would care to comment on whether he would think that would be a good way of introducing more democracy.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Mr. Chair, I believe that we are open to a better system. We feel that there are issues. As a matter of fact, since the last government a lot of substantial changes have been made to that effect and crown corporations are a typical example of that.

The President of the Treasury Board has instituted many recommendations. Changes have been made for the better. We feel that for people who are being nominated the whole process is much more transparent.

I believe we are moving in the right direction when it comes to appointments. Obviously, there is more work to be done. Hopefully, we are going to continue to move in that direction.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Chair, it is appropriate that we are having this take note debate. I read recently in yesterday's Globe and Mail that it will be doing a two or three part series on proportional representation. It is very apt timing on our part to have a debate here in the House on this issue.

I will begin by talking about the problem that spurred us to this debate on the democratic deficit, or democratic reform. It has to do with two issues: cynicism in the voting public and what is perceived to be low voter turnout. These two issues must be put into a better perspective.

Voter turnout has not been a linear thing since 1867. We did not start 130 years ago or so with a 100% turnout in those elections and now we find ourselves today at roughly 60% turnout and that it has been a sort of straight line linear decline in voter turnout since then. That has not been the case. Voter turnout has fluctuated over the last 100 years, sometimes reaching lows of 60% to 65%, sometimes spiking up to 70% or 80% in those elections where there was a very key ballot question, such as the 1988 free trade issue.

Another reason for the way things are the way they are today is because we have a relatively good economic situation and our culture in North America, in the west, is becoming increasingly fractured. Modern life has many competing interests and the body politic is, as a result, becoming fractured. In marketing terms, we would say that the market is being segmented.

I do not deny that there is a lot of cynicism out there and that there are problems with voter turnout and that we should not make efforts to increase voter participation and civic participation.

However, that said, what I worry most about this debate is that, to use a colloquialism, we are going to throw the baby out with the bath water.

One of the solutions being talked about more recently is proportional representation. It is a system that I do not agree with and one that I would quite strongly oppose. I believe in our first past the post system. The reason I do not agree with proportional representation is that on either the full proportional representation system or the mixed one, we would weaken our system of government and would actually remove people from their democratic institutions.

With full PR we would not have constituencies, we would not have ridings, and therefore people would not know who their individual member of Parliament was and, more important I think, individual deputies or members of Parliament would not take ownership of the ridings that they do have or that they have been assigned to because they would have been assigned to them as opposed to ridings that they fought for and won.

I also think that in full PR, as in mixed PR, the party list component of proportional representation gives undue influence and greater power and authority to parties. That is to the detriment of our system as well because by allowing parties to nominate people or to control the lists of people who they would put forward in a proportional representation system we are creating a system where the voters are one step further removed from their democratic institutions.

Some people propose a mixed solution, where half the people in this House, or a quarter of the people, or a third of the people, would be elected through party lists and through proportional representation and the other portion of the House, whether that be one half of it, or a third of it, or three-quarters of it, would be elected through our current system, the first past the post system.

The problem with that is that I have a riding right now which is largely rural. It has about 100,000 people in it. I can, with difficulty, make it to all parts of my riding. It is very difficult. It is many long hours and many weekends going to different parts of the riding, but I am accessible.

If we go to a system of mixed PR where instead of having 308 members of Parliament representing the country we have 100 people on the party list and 200 as riding MPs, suddenly I may find myself in a riding with 200,000 people. In that case it would be virtually impossible for me to be accessible in the way that I am today. It would be virtually impossible for me to cover that kind of geographic territory, to try to cover that number of people and the number of towns. I simply could not possibly do that. That is why I think even mixed PR has its flaws.

The other problem with ridings that get too large is that one of the fundamental principles in our current system is communities of interest. When we get to ridings, especially rural ridings, where we have 200,000 or 300,000 people, we are talking about very different communities of interest. It would be more difficult for an MP to represent two or three very different communities of interest and try to represent them as a single voice in this chamber.

Another reason why I think PR probably would lead to possibly even lower voter turnout is that it would create voter confusion. Right now we have one of the best voting systems in the world in terms of the way we set up our polls and the way we have our ballots laid out. It is very clear. It is paper-based. We go to our polling station and walk up to our ballot box. We have ballots that are consistent across the country. It is very clear who the candidates are and what the parties are. We make our selections. It is very simple, and we walk away.

With mixed PR we would be making two selections. We would vote for a candidate and for a party. I think it could cause mass confusion. At the very least it would cause some voter confusion as to what exactly they were doing and for whom they were voting. That added confusion is also another impediment between the people and their democratic institutions.

However, more important, the reason why I adamantly oppose proportional representation is that we live in a country that is very regionalized. We have very different regions in the country. We have two official languages. We have many different groups. We have British Columbia, the west, the north, Ontario, Quebec and the east. In all general elections we have had since 1867, there have only been two occasions where the voters have sent back a majority government with over 50% of the popular vote. If we went to a full proportional representation system, that would mean we would rarely, if ever, see the kind of majority governments the country needs in order to provide strong leadership. That is why we must reject any form of proportional representation federally. The country needs strong federal governments to carry it through the various crises it will face in decades to come, whether economic or otherwise. That is the strongest reason to keep the first past the post system.

Speaking as a person who is from the Conservative Party, out of self-interest, I would argue in favour of proportional representation. It was our party, our two legacy parties during the last 10 years, that had the most to benefit from PR. For the country's interest, which I place first, we need to stick with the current system.

The problem we have with our system is, to paraphrase the words of one John Diefenbaker, that Parliament is a much misunderstood institution. As parliamentarians, we need to better understand and communicate to Canadians the workings of Parliament and what it does. Our system of government has evolved out of hundreds if not a thousand years of Westminster tradition, and it is very important that we keep that in mind and not act rashly.

I will make a few quick comments as to what I think we can do to address some of this democratic deficit.

We need to reform question period. We need to lengthen the amount of time that people have to ask questions and the amount of time that people have to answer them. I would even be amenable to requiring written submissions of questions 48 hours beforehand, as is done in the United Kingdom Parliament. In that case, we would expect real answers from the government on the real issues we are questioning.

Ministerial statements need to be made in the House. Departmental announcements need to be made in the House, not outside. Too often the functioning of government, the key announcements of the day, are happening outside the House. They need to happen in this chamber.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Chair, I thank my colleague for his very learned intervention in this debate. I agree with a lot of the comments he made in relation to proportional representation and how it would not be of any benefit to Canada in the way this country can be governed by having good, solid majority governments. As we are seeing with the way the House is functioning right now in a minority situation, it has been volatile and does not lend itself to the best governance of the country.

One of the things we want to talk about in fixing the democratic deficit, as my colleague already talked about, is engaging citizens. I wonder if the member could talk to some degree about how we as members of Parliament could better engage our constituents and talk to the people we represent. We do have these very large ridings. There are 308 ridings covering 30 million people. On average there are close to 100,000 people per riding.

My riding is the most populated and the second largest geographically in Manitoba. My riding has over 90,000 people. To drive across it one way takes five hours and to drive across it the other way takes three hours. There are a lot of issues to deal with in getting out to talk to people. We try to do that as members of Parliament in coffee shops, by having our town halls and getting out and engaging with people, but in a rural riding in particular the MP is not going to get to every farm, every fishing camp or see everybody who lives in every corner of the riding.

How do we engage those people? There are a lot of different ways to do it. We could have more direct democracy by allowing them to have more input on some issues through ballot questions, similar to what is done in some other countries. Having that type of engagement would give them the opportunity to express their views other than through voting for a particular party or person when election time rolls around, which on average is every four years.

I would appreciate it if the member would be kind enough to entertain us with some of the great ideas he brought forward.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Chair, in response to the question about how we can engage voters, there is an irony in that academic research has corroborated that when Canadians are asked what they think of their parliamentary institutions, about the government in Ottawa, there is a very cynical response in general. However, when they are asked about their local MP, they very often give the opposite response, that they like their local MP, that they think he is working hard for them and he is accessible and they have a lot of respect for him. When asked the broader question about Ottawa and their parliamentary institutions, it is quite the opposite answer.

MPs in the House do undertake the difficult work of engaging their voters and their constituents through town hall meetings or attending events in the riding, by telephoning constituents and so on. By and large, members in the House do undertake the work to remain engaged with their voters.

Where the problem lies is in the way Parliament operates, in the way we have allowed this institution to become sidelined since the mid-1960s. We as parliamentarians need to address some of the key issues that have allowed Parliament to go into decline. I raised earlier the issue about how question period is conducted.

I could talk as well about how the role of the Crown is rapidly disappearing. Our Parliament is made up of the Senate, the House of Commons and the Crown. The Crown is diminishing in importance in this country. We as parliamentarians and the government across the aisle need to do a better job of making sure that this is not allowed to continue, because the Crown is an integral part of our system. The change in the letters of recall and credence at the end of last year was a very sneaky under the wire act which I disagree with completely. The Queen is our head of state. The Governor General is her representative here and should remain as such.

A sort of republicanism by stealth has been orchestrated over the last number of years in this country. We need to be very careful about not going down that path. When we talk about Parliament we are including the Crown and the Queen. The problem is not with individual MPs who work very hard in their constituencies. It is how we as parliamentarians have treated Parliament, the Senate, the House and the Crown.

Another area of reform which we need to make efforts to address is that ministerial statements, big announcements for government funding should be taking place in the people's chamber, on the floor of the House of Commons. I know it is very tempting to have very formalized photo opportunities. While there may be a place for those from time to time, we also need to make sure that big announcements do happen in this chamber. This was the chamber that people like Winston Churchill addressed. The great leaders of the country in past decades addressed this chamber. Too often in recent years we have not given this chamber the respect and attention it deserves. I do not restrict that to the current government, but I certainly think we all could do a better job here, and the government is included in that.

Another area of reform that needs to be looked at is the way we as parties in the House elect our leaders. There is a bit of a conundrum in that our party leaders are elected by party members and not by the members in this House. As a result, they are not accountable back to us.

Everything this place runs on is a result of party leaders' decisions, the way party leaders decide to appoint people to committee and whatnot. I see that the Chair is asking me to wind up, so I will finish by saying that there is a power imbalance here that needs to be addressed.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Deputy Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Chair, I suspect that we might have heard the last speaker for this evening. If it is not the case, then I will gladly stay to listen to any others, but in case he was the last speaker I just want to thank him and my other colleagues who have participated in tonight's debate and assure them that apart from the moment during which I had to be away I sat here and took note, which is what this debate was supposed to be about in the first place.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Chair, I want to thank the minister for taking note and for listening to all we have said. I hope that he will take to heart the comments that were made about proportional representation, the comments I made about some of the procedural aspects of the House, and some of the comments I made about our parliamentary system of government, in particular the role of the Crown in this great land of ours.

[The Chair]

There being no further members rising, pursuant to Standing Order 53.1 the committee will rise and I will leave the chair.

[The Deputy Speaker]

It being 10:22 p.m., this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 2 p.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 10:22 p.m.)