Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his excellent and tireless work. I also thank members in the House, who took the Prime Minister on his word, in good faith, and consulted with all of their constituents about this most fundamental issue: how we vote and how we elect governments. I know many colleagues on all sides held town halls and consultations of various sorts.
I would like to start my comments today with a quote from the Prime Minister himself, who just a couple of months ago, said the following:
The fact is that Canadians expect that when someone behaves in a way that isn’t consistent with their expectations of themselves, or Canadians’ expectations of them, that they apologize.
I would argue that the expectation that Canadians had of the Prime Minister, the expectation that he placed on himself, was that he would be different, that when he made a commitment, he would keep it, that when he made a promise, it meant something to him.
Let us listen to what he had to say about his promises. He stated:
Canadians elect governments to do hard things and don’t expect us to throw up our hands when things are a little difficult.... No, I’m sorry, that’s not the way I was raised. That’s not the way I’m going to move forward on a broad range of issues, regardless of how difficult they may seem at a given point.
What was he talking about? He was talking about electoral reform. In December of this past year, he was talking about his commitment to electoral reform, which was as clear and as black and white as any promise that the Prime Minister and the Liberal Party made, not just during the campaign but repeated in the throne speech and repeated literally hundreds of times since. In those town halls that the Prime Minister held across the country, not in British Columbia, strangely enough, but across much of the country, when asked about electoral reform and his commitment, he put his hand on his heart, looked into the eyes of Canadians, and said he was deeply committed to it and they could bank on the promise that 2015 will be last election under first past the post.
One would think when the prime minister of a country says something, Canadians ought to believe it. They should have enough faith in that prime minister's integrity that, when he repeats a promise again and again with such great sincerity and emotion, it would mean something. If it does not, then it is that very cynicism to which the Prime Minister promised to be the antidote. He said that cynicism is killing our democracy, that people “lost faith” in the Harper government because it broke its promises. “We must and we will do better”. The Prime Minister stated that. The very cynicism he meant to be the antidote of, he is now being a new source of, for Canadians, particularly young Canadians.
I want to make this point. In the last election and since, many young Canadians were excited by the campaign the Prime Minister ran, because he said he was different, that he talks differently, thinks differently about issues, thinks like young Canadians, and that politics can be better, that the days of old Liberal leaders who would say one thing to get elected and then, once they were in office, realized that it would work for them to break their promises and that they could, without any consequences.
The lesson we have today in this motion is the most simple one. It is the one that we all learned as children and the one that we all, hopefully, teach our children. It is that when we make a promise, we should do everything in our power to keep it, and that if we break the promise, we should apologize. We should admit that it is broken and apologize, and then work our tail off to restore and regain the trust that has been lost.
This should not be hard for some of my Liberal colleagues, because they have already taken a couple of steps with their constituents, with open letters saying they apologize. “I apologize; we made a promise and we broke the promise”, say some of my Liberal colleagues. That is a good thing to do, to admit they made a mistake. Denial is a river in Egypt. Liberals cannot deny this one, and some of them have chosen not to.
We have not heard the Prime Minister apologize yet, which is strange to me, because it was he who made that commitment, he who broke that promise. Yet he did not find the courage to be the one to stand in this Parliament and tell Canadians, “Oh, by the way, all that good faith you placed in me, all those town halls you engaged in, that painful online survey, MyDemocracy.ca, that you suffered through, all of that was actually cynical”. All of that was some attempt to muddy the waters and arrive at this bizarre conclusion that the broad consensus that the Liberals invented halfway through the process, which is now required, does not exist. Some 333 pages from the electoral reform committee put truth to that lie.
The committee was able to listen to experts and listen to evidence. Was that not another promise from the Liberals? It was going to be an evidence-based government. Overwhelmingly, my Conservative colleagues, my Bloc colleagues, and my friend from the Green Party, everybody, paid attention. They realized that of all the experts who came forward, 90% said that if we were going to change the system, proportional was the one we should put on offer.
Eight-six percent of average Canadians who showed up at the open mics wrote to the committee. They completed our own survey, which had the audacity to ask questions like whether they would like to change the electoral system in Canada. It was a question the Liberals forgot to ask in theirs. It asked, if they would like to change it, what kind of system they were interested in.
Canadians were somehow able to handle those tough, mind-boggling questions; 23,000 of them responded to the committee and had no problem with them. There was no scandal.
The Liberals spent $4 million on their consultation process. The consensus is there. The only people who could not get consensus were my Liberal colleagues. Why? As the Prime Minister was breaking his promise, he told Canadians why. He has a preferred electoral system. Never mind that at the committee, there was no evidence to support his alternative vote, alternative facts, system, the system that says we will rank them.
The committee heard from Canadians and from experts that if we are trying to make every vote count, if we are trying to make the system of voting in Canada more fair, the alternative vote makes the problems in our current system worse, so we should not do it.
As the Prime Minister and his office, his “brain trust”, realized, when they said change the voting system, they wanted to change it their way. When they went out and consulted with Canadians in good faith, said the Liberals, they were sorry, but people did not give them the answer they were looking for.
Decision-based evidence-making is the new mantra coming from the Liberals. They are not going to use the evidence in front of them. If the evidence points in the wrong direction and might hurt Liberal prospects of having majority governments to the end of time, they will kill the entire process. If the Prime Minister's credibility takes a hit, well, he is very popular, he is a good-looking guy, and he will be able to survive this.
The Liberals said that people are not paying attention, that no one cares about this issue, about how we vote, or the Prime Minister's promise. There was a petition a Canadian asked me to endorse, and I said sure. It was an electronic petition. We have been doing them for a few years now in the House. Back in November, he read the Prime Minister's interview in Le Devoir.
The Prime Minister said that electoral reform was a big issue when it was Stephen Harper in office and Canadians were unhappy, but now they are happy, and therefore their interest in electoral reform is gone, because I am me, says the Prime Minister.
That Canadian heard that message and worried, properly, that the Liberals might be about to break their promise, so he sent us a petition. It did not get a lot of traction. A few thousand Canadians signed it online just a couple of weeks ago. Well, as of this morning, 92,500 Canadians have gone to the site and said, “Keep the promise. I like the promise. I want the promise”.
We have been hearing, particularly from Liberal supporters, when I have been on talk radio and in my inbox and on social media, some variance of total dismay. They thought this guy was different, or they are disgusted and say that this is exactly what they voted against. They did not want this anymore. They wanted something better, as the Prime Minister promised time and time again.
I will offer this. For those out there who say that Canadians did not wake up this morning concerned about mixed member proportional representation or STV, that this issue is too much in the weeds to matter in politics and that we have bigger issues to fight this day, this could very well be one of those forest fire issues. A lot of Canadians care about the integrity and the promise of a prime minister. They want to know they can trust it when he says it, and we cannot anymore.
This could be one of those forest fires that are the most dangerous kind. Although they burn bright and can be suppressed, and this happens in my region in British Columbia, when people think the fire is out and have moved on, actually it has gone into the roots. My friend from Prince George will know about these fires. These are the most dangerous, because they can pop up again at any time.
They burn so hot and burn so long. This will dog the government from now until the time it heads back to the polls and has the audacity to say that it did not tell the truth last time, it misled people, and it had other issues that were important, but now people can trust it again.
On my last point I would say this. In the current age we live in, with so much global uncertainty, with the rise of this populist and dangerous alt-right movement in the United States and in Europe, the very inoculation we need is a fair voting system. The irony is that a Prime Minister who was elected to diminish cynicism, to raise hope and expectations, and with the sacred bond and trust we have as elected people with those who elect us, is walking away from the very proposal that would inoculate this country against those very dangerous movements that are happening globally.
The Liberals must apologize. They must reconsider their decision, and they must do the right thing and keep their word. Canadians expect no less.