Madam Speaker, I rise with a heaviness and sadness in my heart. Once again the government members of the House, with the exception of one very brave soul, have added to the democratic deficit of the country. They talk about democracy but then they only use its tools to destroy the last vestiges of it within our midst. I wonder how those government members can truly go home tonight and look their spouse in the eye and say, “I'm really proud of what I have done in the House of Commons today”.
Today we had an opportunity to put words into actions. A lot of words are spoken in the Chamber and on the Hill but I do not think Canadians are particularly interested in words. They want to see actions.
This week the procedures and House affairs committee voted to have secret ballots in order to select the chair of each standing committee. I do not know this for sure, but it certainly seems like it, that because the Prime Minister opposes the idea he has strong-armed his caucus once again to take the action that it took today in the House.
I believe there was a time when the people of Canada felt that when they voted and sent their duly elected member of Parliament to Ottawa they were participating in a democratic process. In turn, the members of Parliament would act on their behalf and represent their needs in this hallowed Chamber.
As we all know, the term democracy takes its roots from the ancient Greeks in which it was the rule of the majority, a government by the people. Note that this definition states “majority” and the plural form of people, not the singular autocratic rule that we currently find vested in the Prime Minister's Office here in this place. Because of that, Canadian federal politics, I would venture to say and suggest, is not currently representative of democracy in action.
I do not fully blame the current Prime Minister for the problem. Unfortunately what we are witnessed to is the culmination of years of erosion to our Canadian democratic system. Yet all the while it certainly was the training ground for our current Prime Minister who was tutored under this very same crumbling system.
I have served as a member of Parliament for almost six years. Although this is short in terms of a lifetime, it is long enough I believe to have some understanding of the problems inherent in our system of government. I do not presume to have all the answers but it is important to be able to identify the problems.
Why do I think the current state of our democracy is of great concern for us as Canadians? It is clear that this nation, vast in geography and different in regions, is a very difficult country to govern. The regional differences which have developed over a period of time, from Quebec separatism to western alienation, have been reflected in the outcome of elections since 1993. These problems, which have spawned the development of new political movements and parties, continue to be perpetuated through inequalities in our electoral system. At a surface level, these are seen in Senate representation, first past the post election results, power concentrated in the Prime Minister's Office and the lack of any real power for members of Parliament regardless of which side of the House of Commons they sit on.
If these problems continue over a period of time, I quite frankly fear for our democracy and the continuation of the nation we call Canada. Canada is not a country that came into being as the result of the armed rebellion of its citizens, such as what occurred of course with our neighbour to the south. However I am increasingly hearing from ordinary Canadians who are very discouraged, sometimes outraged and often fed up with the way that our federal government treats them. Mostly they tell me that they simply feel that they are not being heard.
I want to first address the issue of the lack of regional representation in our parliamentary democracy. If different regions of the country are to feel that they are part of the Confederation, their voices must be heard. Our system is a mix of representation by population and constitutional agreements.
The fact that this system has not been changed significantly since the entry of provinces into Confederation starting in 1867 shows how desperately we need to modernize our democracy. It simply is not fair by any stretch of the imagination that the province of Prince Edward Island, for instance, with approximately 135,000 people, has 4 members of Parliament, while the province of British Columbia, with 3.9 million people, has 34. Using the P.E.I. ratio, B.C. should have 115 MPs. There is no question that the province in which I live is underrepresented in the House of Commons. Nor should one province, as in the case of Quebec at the time of Confederation, be guaranteed a certain number of seats even if its population decreases.
Many Canadians decry, for instance, the ineffectiveness of our Senate. It could, with considerable reforms, become the second level of the federal government, giving the regions a greater say in the running of our country. From a western point of view, it would go a long way to fixing the imbalance which we all feel. It would help the west to truly and finally get what we are looking for, echoing the cry of the years that the west wants in. If it does not happen soon, there will be further discouragement and discontent and a search for quite different solutions to the problem.
I want to say categorically that I am proud to be a Canadian. I do not want us to divide into regions that have no alternative at some point in our history but to simply go their own way. There is no question that the democratic deficit in our country today will push us into the hands of the Americans faster than anything as these regions would look for strong partners to give them help with their economies, defence and a whole host of things.
However, and I say this with as much force as I can, this is exactly what I fear will happen if we do not take seriously the need to reform our governmental institutions and bring us back together as a country again.
As I have said before, let us remember that after 135 years of being a democracy, we have had very little substantive reform of our governing systems. The committee system in the House of Commons is a case in point. It is based on the premise that the majority party should always enjoy the last word on everything. Since opposition parties have no choice in the matter, we end up electing chairpersons only from the governing party who determine the agenda for each meeting. An example of this: in the last parliament, when I was vice-chair of the health committee, we could never get the government members to agree to allow us to study the problems of our deteriorating health care system. It was my choice as a new member of Parliament to sit on that committee. I felt that there were some truly difficult issues that we were facing in our health care system, that there were systemic problems that needed to be addressed and that we had been elected to come to this place to talk about the huge issues facing us as a country. I was extremely disappointed when we could never discuss this very basic issue on that committee. Instead, the minister of health of the day would give us make work projects to keep us busy so that we could not talk about the real issues. I wonder who it was?
Very seldom do members of the opposition parties have any real input into the final decisions of committees. We are usually forced to submit minority reports on issues because we feel that our voices are truly not heard. How wonderful it would be if the governing Liberals would share that kind of power with us. It would cut down on the endless wrangling that goes on at committees and the petty politics that are played on all sides, of which we saw evidence in the House today, and maybe, and I think Canadians are looking to us for this, we could come up with a synthesis of the best ideas representative of all the people across the nation.
The role of the private member to initiate legislation has been greatly diminished in the past number of years. Very seldom do good ideas from ordinary backbenchers ever receive approval from the House of Commons. The hon. minister across the way is laughing as if she has not been present in the House and on the Hill to know that happens all the time, and it is part of the frustration of her own backbenchers.
Why does that happen? Again, it is because the government majority simply and usually shoots it down. If the government does not want it, if it is not part of its plan for the country, it simply will not fly. That means that at any given time it is quite possible for a very good idea, which should become law and is perhaps even backed by the majority of the general population, will never see the light of day simply because the government does not want it to happen. Something is wrong here if this is a representative democracy.
We now have a committee agreement, at least I think we do, mainly because of the pressure from our party to have all private members' bills and motions votable. I hope cabinet will see fit to follow through with the wishes of that particular committee report. Previously, MPs might have been successful in getting this issue raised in the House but it would never have been voted on. We are making some progress but it is painfully slow.
What needs to happen now, in my opinion, if we are going to empower voters between elections and even at election time to somehow get back into being interested about our governing systems is this. We can see from the last two or three elections that the interest of Canadians in our governing system is simply diminishing.
Almost 40% of Canadians opted out of the democratic process in the last election and stopped voting. That is not good enough. It points to the problems that we have in this House and in this country about a growing democratic deficit. I fear for the future of our democracy.
If Canadians were to continue to opt out of our political process the government of the day would fill the vacuum by taking onto itself more power. I do not care which party is in power, if we continue the way we are going that is what will happen. It is a fine line we walk and we can easily step over into an out-and-out dictatorship in this country. However, all of us must be determined to get more involved and to take back the political power which is rightfully ours. I hope that it will take place before it is too late.
We had the opportunity to do exactly that in a small incremental way today. Those of us who wanted to use the democratic means at our disposal to further the cause of democracy among us, are once again frustrated about this process. We fear that the good intentions of the committee on procedure and House affairs, in passing the motion about electing chairs of committees by secret ballot, will never, ever see the light of day.
The government will continue to roll over the rights and the freedoms of members of Parliament and individual Canadians, an action that will continue to foster despair and hopelessness, and division in this country, the country that I love and respect. At the end of the day the question that plagues me is this: Is it truly possible for us to take back our democracy before it is too late?
