He did that 14 days after the voters sent him to this House as a Liberal. Other examples include Garth Turner, Wajid Khan and Blair Wilson.
I want to talk about Vancouver Kingsway because I know the story very personally. In 2006, when the Conservative Party first got a minority government, my own member of Parliament, David Emerson, who had been a Liberal cabinet minister, crossed the floor two weeks after the election to become a Conservative cabinet minister. The people of Vancouver Kingsway felt outraged and betrayed by that decision. That betrayal was most deeply felt by the many voters who voted for a Liberal member of Parliament. Moreover, the party that came in second in that election was my own, the New Democratic Party of Canada.
I want to go over some of the numbers in that election. The Liberals in that election had 20,000 votes, the NDP had 15,500 votes and the Conservatives had 8,600 votes. We had 35,500 people who voted for a party other than the Conservatives against 8,600 who voted for the Conservatives.
Not only did the Conservative Party come third in that election, it came far back. The two parties combined, other than the Conservatives, had 400% more votes than the Conservatives and yet the people of Vancouver Kingsway found themselves represented by a Conservative member of Parliament in a Conservative cabinet for his term of office.
That is fundamentally undemocratic and a betrayal of the voters of Vancouver Kingsway, and that is exactly what the people of Vancouver Kingsway declared to this country.
Interestingly, on election night, Mr. Emerson celebrated his victory for the Liberals by declaring publicly on television that he would be the Prime Minister's worst nightmare. Two weeks later, on February 6, he was that same Prime Minister's minister of international trade. Who would stand in the House and justify such a fundamental betrayal of the democratic process? That is just absolutely awful.
The people of Vancouver Kingsway rose up in disgust. Signs sprung up all over Vancouver Kingsway. People like Mike Watson, the president of the local Conservative Riding Association, a man of rare integrity and principle, people like Jurgen Claudepierre, a lifelong Liberal supporter, and Shannon Steele, the New Democrat, worked together from all three sides of the political spectrum to oppose that fundamental rejection of the will of the people of Vancouver Kingsway.
For a democracy to work, people need to have trust in their politicians and trust is at an all time low in this country. People are not voting in elections. Why? It is because they do not trust politicians to keep their word.
There is no more fundamental breach of trust of politicians in this country than to ask for someone's trust and vote to represent their philosophy in the House of Commons and then get into the House and change. The recent example of the member for Saint-Maurice—Champlain crossing the floor is outrageous. The numbers are staggering. The Liberals had 12% in that riding and the member thinks it is a fair representation of constituents' vote to cross the floor to the Liberal Party. That is fundamentally wrong and should not be defended by anybody. This legislation should be put into practice to bring democracy to this country.