Madam Chair, the debate tonight is about engaging citizens and how we in fact engage citizens more effectively in the democratic process. It should be a compelling discussion. We do not reflect on the absence of members, but it is interesting to see how engaging it is in that in fact there are four of us in the House of Commons tonight in this engaging discussion.
Citizens will be engaged if they have a sense of something; I want to get to that in a minute. It is very positive that we are hearing about the techniques that various MPs use to engage citizens and to get information out to them. That is good and it is helpful. We can learn from each other in non-partisan ways.
Around my constituency, I use many of the techniques that I have heard about here tonight, such as holding small group meetings and town hall meetings. I go door-knocking in between election times, which shocks people. When we are at the door, their feeling is to wonder what we are selling. I send out surveys regularly to get feedback. I regularly set up a booth in local farmers' markets or malls and I advertise in the paper that I am going to be there. People can walk by. There are people who do not normally have the time to make an appointment or set something up, or maybe they are intimidated by going into an office. They can just walk right up and say whatever it is they want to say. We use the Internet and various techniques.
Techniques are important, but citizens will engage only if they feel they can actually influence the world around them. That may be just their neighbourhood or their own home, but if they do not feel they can influence those who purport to represent them, they are going to disengage no matter how many wonderful techniques we put in place to give the appearance of engagement and the appearance that they could make a difference. If they do not sense through their elected persons that they can make a difference, they are increasingly going to disengage. I would suggest that this is largely where we are today.
Some people point accusingly at people who are not engaged, as we call it, in the political process. Maybe they accuse them of being selfish or apathetic. Largely, I believe, many citizens have a sense that what they think and what they say really does not make that big a difference. Until it is something of a huge and major proportions, they are not going to rise up.
Was it not interesting to see one of the greatest movements of citizen involvement in terms of a spontaneous picking up of the telephone and citizens calling not their politicians but a government funded agency? I say this with all respect. It was the night that people thought Don Cherry's contract was not going to be renewed. Personally, I like Don Cherry. We were told that the CBC was flooded with thousands upon thousands of phone calls. Why? Because people at that moment felt that something they liked was being threatened. It was not orchestrated, but they felt that if enough of them got onto it they could make a difference. Apparently they did, yet other areas of social concern do not seem to get the same reaction.
I would like to read for the House a statement by a social commentator. Some of you would be familiar with H.L. Mencken. He said this 70 years ago, so he is not politically correct on the gender issue; the word “man” means man or woman. It is gender neutral. He said:
The average man...sees clearly that government is something lying outside him...that it is a separate, independent and often hostile power...capable of doing him great harm. [Government] is apprehended, not as a committee of citizens chosen to carry out the communal business of the whole population, but as a separate and autonomous corporation, mainly devoted to exploiting the population for the benefit of its own members.
That is a harsh critique, but I think it largely spells out how many of our citizens feel: that the government across the way and we as the opposition are an entity unto ourselves. And life goes on. We become engaged here in question period and the great debates. We get all fired up and call home and ask, “Did you hear me say this?” or “Did you hear my friend say that?” They are saying, “Huh?” No, our citizens are trying to make a living or taking their kids to soccer games. We are becoming increasingly irrelevant in the minds of our citizens.
If one does not feel that one can have an influence one is not going to engage. In a tyranny or a dictatorship, obviously, we see the greatest lack of citizen involvement, because there is a great cost to engagement. It could be death or imprisonment. There is virtually no engagement.
Or there is the fear of losing something. Nathan Sharansky talks about two types of societies. We like to think in terms of communist or capitalist or socialism or fascism. He breaks it all down to two societies: fear societies and free societies. In a free society people can speak up freely because they do not think they will be punished for it. They may run into vigorous debate, but they do not think there will be some sort of loss.
We say almost cynically at times that there is nothing wrong with a benevolent tyranny, a benevolent dictatorship. People have written about the present form of our government as a benevolent or a friendly dictatorship. In fact, the problem with a dictatorship is that power is concentrated in the hands of a very few people, or one of a few people. When that happens, Lord Acton's corollary kicks in: power tends to corrupt. It tends to corrupt, and of course ultimate power, supreme power, corrupts supremely.
It is for that reason that our society has to be broken down and we have to acknowledge the division of power. We have to keep power away from ourselves as individuals and as small groups, because the more power we have centralized within our own power, we will be corrupted.
We are hammering on the federal Liberals with the scandal situation and let us face it: in Conservative politics there has been scandal also. We can go right back to the start of our history with Sir John A. Macdonald and the famous scandal that brought his government down. This is not a partisan issue.
How can we break down that division of power and make people feel that they can make a difference? First of all, we must recognize that individuals are sovereign and that the very purpose of government is to recognize the fact that each one of us as individuals has God-given rights and the only purpose of government is to protect those rights and secure those rights for us. If I am representing my constituents, I am there to protect their rights and to make sure those rights are secure.
I am talking about federal politics now--but some of these would have similar relations to municipal or provincial politics--when I say that there is no greater sense of discouragement for one of my constituents than for him or her to think that I as their representative have absolutely no influence, that I cannot make a difference for my constituents. That would be ultimately discouraging for them. No matter what techniques I put in place they would not engage in the process, because they would say, “He can't do anything. He has no influence at all”.
Thus, I believe that this is one of the most important things that could happen to engage citizens. This government could do this. Members can determine how they want to qualify this person, but here is a great quote:
Unfortunately, the authority of the individual Member of Parliament has been allowed to erode, while the power of the executive has grown steadily.
I agree with that. Concentrating power in a small group of people will discourage citizens from being involved.
The quote goes on:
We must loosen the hold of party discipline over Members of Parliament--
I agree with that. It continues:
--so that they can more freely and more frequently employ their own judgment on individual matters...we must give new means to individual Members of Parliament to represent their consciences and their constituents.
The author of that quote is none other than our present Prime Minister.
Across the land today, whichever side people are on the issue of the same sex marriage legislation, there is one thing that all citizens in Canada understand. On this matter of conscience, many members of Parliament are not allowed to vote freely. That has more of a discouraging effect across the country because it spreads out from that particular issue. Let us leave that issue. It reinforces the sense that members of Parliament cannot vote freely.
It is not just all of the Liberal members to whom the Prime Minister has said “You will not vote your conscience”. He promised it here. He wants to see changes so that members can represent their consciences and their constituents, and yet he said, “No, you are not going to”.
I am just using examples and I am trying to keep this from being partisan. The leader of the NDP has said to his entire caucus, not just a big portion of the caucus, “You will not vote freely on this issue”. It reinforces the notion that across the country members of Parliament do not have the freedom to speak for their constituents.
Until we reverse that notion, all the techniques, all the blogs, all the Internets, and all the townhall meetings will have the same struggle of getting people engaged, so that they feel they have an influence. When there is a sense in the land that individuals do not have a say, that they will not be able to in any way get their way, then this characterization of government will ring true, that we are a separate autonomous group, largely removed from everyday life and becoming increasingly irrelevant.
That is a dangerous situation that any society should steer away. Restoring the freedom of vote to all members of Parliament will start to engage citizens again.