Thank you, Madam Speaker.
I thought for a slight moment of brevity within the room today I would read the rules for Calvinball as I discovered them on the Internet. Someone has taken the time to put the rules for Calvinball together and I thought that given the current situation we are dealing with where the government seems to be making up the rules in its favour as it goes along, I would read the rules of Calvinball so that we could see some of the similarities.
Calvinball was invented by Calvin and Hobbes. The rules include:
1. All players are required to wear a Calvinball mask. This regulation is not to be questioned.
2. All following rules may be changed, amended or deleted by any player involved at any point in the game.
3. Any player may declare a new rule whenever he/she wants. This can be done audibly or silently, depending on the zone the player is in.
4. The Calvinball may be used in any way the player sees fit, whether to cause injury to other players or to gain benefits for himself.
5. Any penalty legislation may be in the form of pain, embarrassment, or any degradation the rulee wishes to execute upon the other player.
6. The Calvinball field consists of areas, or zones, which are governed by a set of rules declared by players.... For example, a corollary zone would enable a player to make a corollary (sub-rule) to any rule already made. Or a pernicious poem place would require the intruder to do what the name implies. Or an opposite zone would enable a player to declare reverse playability on the others. (Remember, the player would declare this zone oppositely by not declaring it.)
7. Players may name flags, assigning their powers and the rules governing the use of the respective flag.
8. Songs are an integral part of Calvinball and verses must be sung spontaneously through the game when randomly assigned events occur.
9. Score may be kept or disregarded. In the event that score is kept, it shall have no bearing on the game nor shall it have any logical consistency to it. (Legal scores include 'Q to 12', 'BW-109 to YU-34, and 'Nosebleed to Pelvic Fracture'.)
10. Any rule above that is carried out during the course of the game may never be used again in the event that it causes the same result as a previous game. Calvinball games may never be played the same way twice.
11. A Calvinball may be a football, volleyball, or any other reasonable ball.
12. The Calvinball field should be any well-sized field, preferably with trees, rocks, grass, creeks, and other natural obstacles.13. Other optional equipment includes flags, wickets (especially of the time-fracture variety), and anything else the players wish to include.
Those are the rules to Calvinball.
During my reading of the rules, members might have seen some of the government's antics in the Calvinball game. If the rules are changed as the game goes along, a player is guaranteed to win. That is the outcome of Calvinball.
As soon as we started discussing this issue about three weeks ago, I thought it sounded like something I had heard before, and that was Calvinball. I printed off all of the scenarios in which Calvinball comes up in the Calvin and Hobbes comics.
Everybody should read Calvin and Hobbes, because there are great life lessons within all of the Calvin and Hobbes comics.
The names of Calvin and Hobbes are based on two philosophers, John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes. Their characters are actually reversed in the book.
That was my initial reaction to it. I hope that members were able to see along with me the correlation between the Liberals changing the rules to meet their own ends.
One of the main arguments the Liberals use for wanting to change the rules of this place is they say they want to modernize this place. That to me flies in the very face of everything that I thought about before I came here. I thought that this was a place that was steeped in tradition, that this was a place that held the line fast, and that there was a whole bunch of things that we did not change. I thought that if everything else changed in the world, the Parliament of Canada would still be the same. We would still have the same basic rules that cause it to function.
As we move from the trajectory of tradition and looking back at the history of making this place operate on a set of principles, and move toward a more Calvinball scenario, we will lose the very things that make us Canadian. We will lose the very thing that makes this place productive and ensures that we create robust laws for the country.
One of the other things I want to mention is the difference between government and Parliament. This is something I deal with a lot in my own riding. I get this a lot. I am the federal representative for about one-sixth of the province of Alberta. Most people say, “You're the government, you should fix this problem”, or, “You're the government, why do things have to be like this?” I say that I am their representative at the federal stage, but I am not a member of the government. I am a member of the official opposition not a member of the governing party. They will often respond, “But you're a member of Parliament.” I say that is exactly what I am. I am a member of Parliament, along with 337 other people. I explain that only the Prime Minister and his cabinet make up the government, and the rest of us are here to hold them to account, to question what they are doing or not doing, and these kinds of things.
That is a clarification that I would like to make, that we are all members of Parliament in this place but we are not all the government. I will make this point once again. These seats belong to the people of our ridings, not to the government.
One of the other reasons the Liberals brought forward the discussion bill they have talked about is that they want to get rid of the omnibus bills. In the news article I read this morning, it said they wanted to make it so that the Speaker could make rulings on whether omnibus bills could be voted on all at once or whether they would be broken up into different pieces. It seems to me that is deferring responsibility. If the government wants to put something in an omnibus bill, it is its prerogative to do that. If it does not want to do that, it is also its prerogative. However, to put things in an omnibus bill and allow the Speaker to break it up would mean that they would put everything in an omnibus bill and then hope for the best. The Speaker would maybe miss something or break it up into chunks that they would like. I do not see the value in that at all. If the Liberals want to use omnibus bills, they should use them and allow the people of Canada to make the judgment on that.
Lastly, I would like to talk a bit about the Friday sitting. To some degree, I feel that I get used a lot on this Friday sitting. They say they want to make it more family friendly. I am one of the members with children. I have three young children. My daughter is four, my son is two, and I have a three-month-old daughter as well. When I come to Ottawa, I take them with me. All the way from northern Alberta is about a 10-hour trip one way. To say that getting rid of the Friday sitting would make my life easier is a misnomer. Having an entire week off works well for me, but having an extra day on the weekend does not make my life any easier. In fact, I would probably see my wife and kids less often than I do currently. It is only on weeks that we are not here that I go home for the entire week. If it is two weeks in a row, I will stay here over the weekend. If we then added another day to that, it would be less incentive for me to stay in Ottawa and go home for the weekend. I would not see my family nearly as often. Therefore, not sitting on Friday is not family friendly at all for me.