You guys applaud easily. Do you do that for B.C. and Alberta, too? I will mention them. There we go. And one for Alberta. Okay. Now, we have got through that. One would think it would be motherhood, given all that applause, that we would not be stuck in this position where we are.
Mr. Speaker, let me also say that we believe, as we approach this, that we need to be recognizing the constitutional structure of Canada, our history, as well as community of interest, as defined by the Supreme Court. Those are fundamental principles that we hold out as we move forward in reviewing this bill.
Before I leave that, let me also say, and this is important, that this is like fixing one-third of the democratic deficit we have in Canada. The other two-thirds are comprised of, ultimately, getting rid of that other place down the hall that we do not need and, second, getting proportional representation, which would truly give us a House representative of population.
We need to go to a PR House, get rid of the other place, increase the seats that the provinces need to reflect their population, and then all we have done is a major repair work. Then there is the actual onward building of the country. That is the kind of work we need to do. However, this is an important piece of it. That is why we are holding the government to account on not having brought this bill forward for eight months. This argument, because there have been some kerfuffles around other bills, that somehow the opposition denied the minister and the government the opportunity to bring in this bill is just nonsense.
First, most of the time that we took up in this place in the last year was to make up for the ground we lost because the government prorogued. So a lot of the time that was here was time that the government wasted, and those bills have been in here three and four times. The government also could have extended the hours in the last days of the sitting. It did not do that.
I hear the minister over there laughing. I do not know what he is laughing about. It is important work. The hours were there. The time was there to do it. Given that I heard the Minister of Democratic Reform say the reason the bill did not come in was because the government did not have House time, I am pointing out that is not accurate. There was a lot of House time. What was missing was the political will to bring it forward, which brings me to the article that triggered all of this.
I have made the comments here that we had a fulsome debate on April 20, for anybody who is following these things, about the Bloc position and an amendment that we put. I think it very clearly states where we are on this issue. It expands on the principles that I have already mentioned this morning. We support not the 25%, and there is a reason for that, but indeed the 24.35%, which represents the relative strength of Quebec now when this bill is introduced. But more important, that represents the relative weight of the seats for Quebec in the House of Commons as it was at the time that this House unanimously said we recognize the Québécois as a nation within a united Canada.
The reason we are even debating this today, in the last dying moments of the House, is an article in the December 2 Globe and Mail, by John Ibbitson. I realize the reporters do not write the headlines, but the headline is “Federal parties agree to scrap bill to correct voting inequalities”.
I was interviewed for that, and I have to tell members it was one of those moments. We get going through an interview and the reporter throws a piece of information at us that we did not know or that is new or maybe it is something that is thrown out there to throw us off. It is a whole art unto itself, interviewing us types.
I am going to be straight upfront about where we are here, how we got here and the confusion around this article. That is my fashion, as people who know me know.
The reporter was going along sort of normal, so to speak. I do not have a tape but I suspect the reporter does. In the midst of the interview, the reporter said, “I want you to know that I've talked to one your party strategists, who I can't name but who tells me that there's an unofficial, a wink-and-a-nod deal to make sure that C-12 doesn't become law, doesn't carry, doesn't move”.
That caught me flat-footed because I had heard no such thing from anyone. However, I have been around long enough in government and in opposition to know that sometimes decisions are taken at higher levels up the food chain than me and we are not always notified in a quite timely way.
I was sort of dancing a little, thinking maybe there was something going on and I did not know about it. I said as much to the reporter. I said, “To the best of my knowledge all I can do is reflect where the elected caucus is. Unnamed, unknown, confidential party strategists I do not know about. The position of the NDP on Bill C-12 is that, as an elected member, as the elected chair of the Ontario caucus within our federal caucus and as a member from Ontario, I can tell you that we are supportive of Bill C-12 getting to committee so that we can do the work that needs to be done. Nothing has changed”.
I said that. I did not know how the article would turn out. When I looked at it, the whole article was what these strategists in the background said. I know I am wading into waters that I am going to regret.