Mr. Chair, I am a little torn on the issue of citizen referendums. In certain cases that is an excellent way to gauge the pulse of the nation. It certainly has its place. I cannot say that we should engage in citizen referendums on every issue. Parliament would be relatively ungovernable if we were to have a referendum on every single issue that came before this assembly.
However, this assembly should take an initiative and make a concerted effort to examine the whole concept of citizen referendums to see how it could be incorporated into some of the business that we do here. Let us all be honest, there are certain pieces of legislation that, while important, need not be whipped by any party.
What we are trying to accomplish as a Parliament is to ensure that the majority wishes of Canadians are heard. Some will argue and we have heard it before, particularly in the civil marriage debate, that the majority wishes cannot dictate the minority rights situation. Leaving that aside for a moment, I am suggesting there are many issues that have come before us as parliamentarians that are not perhaps that controversial and do not impact the personal religious views or morality issues.
We deserve to examine the possibility of how we can incorporate citizen referendums into the voting patterns of the House because in many cases we absolutely want to know what Canadians feel on issues. I am doing as much as my hon. colleague is doing in his riding in terms of surveys. I am doing it by Internet, by phone calls, by 10 percenters, and all of the various communication avenues that we have.
On almost every piece of legislation that comes down, I am trying to get that information out to my constituents and ask them a very simple question, “What do you think of this piece of legislation? Here are the pros, here are the cons. How do you wish me to proceed?” I cannot do it in every single case, but on the majority of pieces of legislation that this government has brought down, my constituents are aware of the legislation and are aware of my views. I encourage them to contact me if they want to express their thoughts. I do that. We should all be encouraged to do that and this assembly should be taking some very serious steps in making that a preferred method of voting.