Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague from Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston. I had the opportunity to work with him on the Special Committee on Electoral Reform. I would not want to hurt his feelings today, but I have rarely heard him give such an unfocused speech.
I think that we should pay serious attention to one particular witness I heard at the Special Committee on Electoral Reform. He is considered a leading expert on electoral laws. His name is Jean-Pierre Kingsley. I asked him a very simple question about the link between political party financing and a more equitable electoral system. He said that the per-vote public subsidies to political parties should be restored as soon as possible. Liberals and Conservatives should put that in their pipe and smoke it. That is what Jean-Pierre Kingsley says. He is not some kind of dinosaur, he is someone who deeply cares about the vitality of democracy.
That is what we are talking about, the vitality of democracy. We are not trying to determine if the Bloc Québécois is in financial trouble, if the Green Party and the NDP are in financial trouble or if the Conservative Party has more or less money now than when it was in government.
The Liberal Party was once in favour of electoral reform and a return to a per-vote subsidy for political parties, but now that its coffers are full and it is in power, it no longer sees the need for reform. Why is that?
Certain ideas kept coming up during meetings of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform. We did not end up reforming anything, but things were said, and some of those things had to do with the ruling in Figueroa. A true democracy enables true democratic debate. True democratic debate is predicated on a plurality of positions. That is the purpose the per-vote subsidy serves.
The question that came up was why citizens would bother going to the polls. We have heard statements such as, “Fewer and fewer people vote” and “People are cynical about democratic institutions”. The truth is that people will go to the polls out of a sense of conviction.
A modicum of electoral fairness can only be achieved through a per-vote subsidy. Of course, a proportional ballot would have been even fairer, and would have brought electoral pluralism to the House of Commons.
Canadians will go to the polls to vote out of conviction and they might vote for the Green Party, for example. They know that by voting for the Green Party, $1.75 will be given to that party so that it can continue advancing its cause between elections, as part of the democratic debate in a democratic society, so that when elections are called, all parties can participate form the outset in a fair and democratic electoral debate. That is how a real democrat sees it, unlike a Sunday democrat such as the Liberal Party deputy leader. On this side, we are no Sunday democrats. It has nothing to do with our coffers being full or not. It has to do solely with our sense of democracy. I appeal to the sense of democracy of all members so they stop letting the executive control them for a moment.
We know that, when you are in government, it is easy to raise cash with cocktail parties attended by a cash-for-access minister. That issue was raised in the House. The Prime Minister had to answer for that. When this kind of thing happens, it reflects badly on all parliamentarians. Those people are saying they want to continue doing things the same way.
I will have the opportunity to speak to it again, but I want to say for now that my colleague has just introduced a balanced bill that provides for public financing of political parties. That is how we can engage citizens in the democratic process and get them to vote. That is what is at stake in this bill.
I would be very disappointed if parliamentarians moved to kill this bill before it can be considered clause-by-clause, amended and improved.
Why would this bill not pass first reading and then be improved by all the real democrats in the House?