Mr. Speaker, I apologize for having to ask about the time I had available to me a few minutes ago. We switched between two different items, and I was not sure whether I had 10 minutes or 20 minutes. I have since confirmed with the table, and I see you signalling as well, that it is 10 minutes this time. I will adjust my speaking matter accordingly.
Earlier I took a few moments to congratulate the minister on being back in the House and being a new mom. It was wonderful to see her. I think everyone is as pleased as I am.
I want now to dwell on an issue on which I think the minister and I may not yet be on the same page. I am hopeful that I will be able to convince her and her House leader, through my words, of the merits of the position I am going to put forward. This is an argument as to the importance of electoral law and the detail involved in it and the importance of not rushing through debate on it.
In my remarks a few moments ago, I pointed out that our electoral law is unusual in that items that would normally be dealt with through the regulatory power, that would be written up through orders in council or ministerial orders and put on the books that way, having the force of law but not having been debated in the House, are, in fact, debated in the House and in committee. Because of the unique nature of electoral law, we are all interested parties. If the government, which is ultimately represented by only one party, were to have charge of those rules, it might very well change the rules in its own interest. Therefore, this law, unlike other laws, has never been moved from its original position of being dealt with entirely in the House.
At one time, we dealt with all legislation this way: in the House. We did not send it off to committee. We did not have regulatory powers. That all came later, with the development of what we call the bureaucratic state, or the administrative state, in the 20th century. We never moved this over for that reason. That means that we have to give this material the time it needs.
I am well aware of the argument being presented, or that I suspect will be presented, on the government side that we should move to some form of time allocation, because time is of the essence. Time is of the essence because an election is looming, a year and four months from now. The Chief Electoral Officer has indicated that we will not be able to enact that legislation and put in place the administrative procedures necessary to make it happen in the new ways that have been laid out in this bill unless it is passed very soon.
With regard to the point that we must now hurry, I will point out that, number one, it is not actually necessary to put this legislation through to have a successfully conducted election. We had a successfully conducted election that involved the true test of all elections. It involved the incumbent government being relieved of power in 2015. Therefore, this is not absolutely essential. It would be nice, but it is not essential.
It is not essential that this bill be passed in its original form. In particular, a bill that gets into this kind of detail ought to be looked at with a view to making such changes as would make it better. This is largely administrative law, detailed law, the kind of thing where slight wording changes can make a substantial difference. It is not the sort of broad, sweeping principle we see in some shorter pieces of law, certainly in motions in the House, and in the Constitution. This is at the exact opposite end of the bell curve of potential legislation. It is detail-oriented and requires detailed study. That is part of the reason a convention has developed that one ought not apply time allocation to electoral legislation.
The other reason it ought not happen is that the devil is in the details, by which I mean not merely that there could be omissions that might occur when dealing with detailed legislation, and I am not suggesting, implying, or insinuating that this is the case here, but it can happen that provisions written specifically for the purpose of privileging the incumbent party are written into legislation.
That was exactly the situation a little over a year ago when we were dealing with the electoral reform issue. We were dealing with a series of hearings that were to produce legislation, and it became evident that the government had been spinning its wheels for 18 months to create a crisis, a rush, which could only be dealt with by changing the electoral system in the particular way that would benefit the Liberal Party of Canada.
There is only one system, other than the current system, that can produce a better result for the Liberal Party of Canada, which is the preferential ballot. That is the system the Prime Minister favoured. I assume he favoured it all along. He claimed to have an open mind. However, when it was all over, he said he would never consider proportional representation as an alternative to the status quo, the first past the post system, and would only ever consider a preferential system. He went on to describe the scenarios of the public policy disasters that he imagined would arise if we had a proportional system, the system that was favoured by virtually every person in the public hearings across the country who wanted change.
Creating a crisis by spinning one's wheels does not mean that the rest of the country needs to feel in crisis on order for us to pass the government's legislation. The fact is that the government could have introduced this legislation earlier. It might have been fewer than 300 pages long and dealt only with some of the subject matter, but as far back as the last election and the throne speech, the government was very specific in saying there were things that it did not like in the Fair Elections Act, the bill that passed by the last Parliament to change the Elections Act.
The opposition then indicated it was unwilling to proceed, that it thought it was wrong for us to proceed via time allocation. Now, I should say that time allocation was indeed applied. I am sure the other side will make that point. However, it was not as aggressive a time allocation as being advocated in this case. As well, if the Liberals believed that time allocation was wrong then, and they seemed very sincere about that when they were in opposition, then I have to believe that if time allocation were introduced now, they would regard that as a breach of their own de facto promise to the Canadian people that they would not impose electoral reform or new elections legislation in violation of the convention that has developed that time allocation not be introduced to make changes to the Elections Act.
That is to say, it is not appropriate for the Liberals to say that when they were in opposition they were opposed to time allocation, that when the Conservatives were in power they abused this convention and, therefore, that the convention does not exist. I think the Canadian people, those who voted for the Liberals because they were unhappy with this sort of thing, said something to the effect that they were not happy with the Conservatives and would like to elect the Liberals because they would do things differently. I do not think Canadians would have been happy if they realized that the plan was for the Liberals to say that since the Conservatives had rolled back a convention, they could now regard it in the same way.
Whatever the Liberals said about the Conservative government trampling democracy would be true in the same measure of the Liberals now in power. Let me make this point by quoting the member of what was then Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, now Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame. At the time, in debate in this place he said:
If we are actually debating on second reading, third reading, or reports stage any changes to the Elections Act or the Parliament of Canada Act, time allocation and closure need not apply. It basically codifies a convention in this House, [here he was speaking to his own motion] a tradition we should respect....
He went on to say:
I hope every member of this House will agree with us that closure and, specifically, time allocation would be set aside because of something of this importance.
This was a convention that had arisen. It ought to be re-established.
Albert Venn Dicey, the great 19th century English legal philosopher, developed the idea of conventions. He said that a convention comes into force in practice when parties on both sides have respected it. I suggest that if the Liberals thought the convention was in danger in the last Parliament, they may very well be on the verge of destroying it by acting again in that way. Presumably, a convention can be removed by two parties acting in sequence.
I would like to see us not break that convention. I would like to see us re-establish the convention that time allocation is never applied to changes to the Elections Act. I hope the Liberals will come to agree with me. There is still time for them to do so.