Mr. Speaker, I want to start my speech today by saying how proud I am to be chosen as the representative of the famous seat of Prince Albert in Saskatchewan. I also want to acknowledge my mother, because I think without either one of them I would not be here today. I just want to make that observation. My mother is 89, lives in Assiniboia and is still in fairly good health. I know she is very proud to have a son who has the opportunity to represent people in this institution.
We live in a representative democracy. I used to teach school, where I emphasized to students the fact that we live in a system of government of representative democracy.
Even prior to the opening of this new session of Parliament, I received thousands upon thousands of e-mails, correspondence and telephone calls on this particular issue. Since the opening of the House in February I have received 1,400 more pieces of mail on this issue. We have tabulated them.
Over 90% of the people want me to defend the traditional definition of marriage. They have made it very clear to me. They see this as a powerful and important social institution in our society that must be preserved and protected.
That is the message I have received. It is not really a question of what I think on the topic. I was elected by my constituents to be their voice in Ottawa. I am in Ottawa today and I am representing their point of view.
I am appalled and I am embarrassed that there are leaders of other parties in the House of Commons who will not let their individual members of Parliament do the same thing as my party and my leader permit me to do: to represent my constituents on a matter of conscience and the heritages and traditions of this country. It appalls me.
In the last election less than 50% of the people voted in some seats. I would say that people are getting the message that leaders of parties are undermining representative democracy by compelling their members to vote the way the leader wants them to rather than the way their constituents want. This is a very serious problem in our democracy. If we do not fix it we are going to find this institution in need of serious repair.
I also would like to speak on a couple of what might be unrelated topics, but in a way they are related. The first is the concept of separation of church and state. Members opposite, including members of the NDP, have often made reference to this being Canada where we have separation of church and state. What they really mean by that commentary is that religious people should keep their mouths shut and have no business speaking out on the matters of the day. I find that appalling, because many people in this country came here to get away from religious persecution and prosecution so they would have freedom of religion, and it happened in the United States as well.
My understanding of separation of church and state is that we live in a country in which our government protects freedom of religion and one's right to speak. Section 2 of the charter says that it is a “fundamental freedom” and the party opposite has the audacity to accuse other parties of somehow being against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I find this an amazing argument.
Let us look at the great reforms that have happened over the last couple of hundred years: the elimination of slavery, the end of child labour in Great Britain, public education reforms, and the end of racial discrimination and segregation in the United States. Who led those causes? They were not politicians. They were people of religious conviction who saw very sinful or outrageous practices that were immoral and contrary to their religious values, and they fought very hard to end those institutions. They were successful and that led to great reforms.
What a travesty of history there would have been had we had lived in a society in which the government told those people to shut up, that they had no right to speak out. Would we have made the social progress that we have today?
To my friends in the NDP who also spout the same point of view, most of the people who founded the CCF movement were people of devout Christian beliefs. They believed in the social gospel. One of the most powerful people in that movement was Tommy Douglas. I am from Saskatchewan. I know what his election campaigns were about. He said to the people of Saskatchewan, “Vote for me and through government, I will create a new Jerusalem in Saskatchewan. We will eliminate poverty. We will bring in free health care”. That was his social gospel. The same people today are saying that there has to be a separation of church and state and that the religious people have to shut up.
I say to a lot of educated people on the opposite side, including the Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Justice, that they must have gone through a different school system than I did. I would throw out a few names to them: Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Garrison, Lincoln, Woodsworth, Ernest Manning, T.C. Douglas, Bishop Tutu, Malcolm X and William Wilberforce. They were people who were motivated by their religious beliefs and were successful in leading great reforms in their societies. Members opposite are saying that this is wrong, but I think they are wrong.
I want to make another observation. I have also been told by members opposite that somehow majority governments and votes, and so on in a democratic system are a threat to our individual freedoms and rights. That argument is very difficult to comprehend. When the charter was instituted in 1982, we did not invent the ideas that went into the charter. Those ideas already existed. Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the democratic principles, the criminal justice principles, equality under and before the law had existed already. Where did they come from? They came from our mother country, England. They had been developed hundreds of years before we put them in a written constitution in Canada.
How did they come about in England? England does not have a written constitution. Britain does not have a constitution that has a bill of rights written out saying that certain things exist for every citizen. It has an unwritten constitution which is very short. It says that the democratically elected Parliament is supreme. It is out of that environment of electing majority governments over hundreds of years that we got things like freedom of religion, freedom of speech, criminal justice principles, democratic principles, great reforms that became part of our society in Canada.
The ultimate minority right is that one is innocent until proven guilty. Guilt must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. There are a whole lot of concepts that are minority rights.
Parliament in Great Britain has been very good at identifying and protecting minority rights. It shows an appalling lack of understanding of where we are today for members opposite to say that democracy and Parliament are the enemies of rights, principles and freedoms. They should go back to school or to the institutions that they attended and examine some of the papers that they wrote because that is not my understanding of where we got these very important principles. I do not see democracy and Parliament as threats to our fundamental freedoms and values.
I want to make one final observation. I prize my personal freedom and liberty very much. I accept that I have to surrender some of my freedom for the public good and that is through the democratic process. If I am going to give up my personal freedom and liberty, I would much rather submit to the will of the majority than the will of a minority. If we do not understand that concept in 2005 and if our government does not understand that concept, the institutions of Parliament and democracy are in trouble.
