John Bryden

[Supply, February 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I commend the member opposite for his remarks, particularly as they are aimed at the issue at point, proportional representation. I would like to ask the member a somewhat delicate question.

He alluded in his remarks to the possibility of being able, with electronic voting, to vote from one's constituency. I would like to ask him a question. Does he feel that an MP's primary responsibility should be to be at parliament, on this hill at least if not in this Chamber, when parliament is in session? In other words, do his voters not actually expect him to be here in Ottawa, at parliament, when the House is sitting?

[Supply, February 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Halifax mentioned that there are only three countries left in the world which exclusively have the first past the post constituency system, but she failed to name those three countries and I will name them for her. They are Canada, the United States and Britain, the three oldest democracies and the three most successful democracies.

[Supply, February 15th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I must say that if that was a question or comment I look forward with eager anticipation for the speech that is to come.

I do not think the member opposite listened to me very carefully because I did assure him that the whole question of child labour is something that should be debated, and that there should be a debate in the House on the question of a free trade zone. There is no doubt in my mind.

But the member has simply ignored the fact that if we put it to a vote, the government would simply pass it because it would use its majority. We can have the debate and we should have the debate, but it does not have to be through legislation. It can be done through a simple resolution of the House.

Mr. Speaker, if the member's questions are that long, we could have a 12 hour or a 15 hour debate in which he could speak for 40 minutes and he could get all these things onto the record.

[Supply, February 15th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, well oddly enough sometimes it is harder for the federal government to negotiate with the provinces than it is with other states.

Of course we want to get as free an exchange of skills and products as we can in this country. However, it is a two way street on that. Sometimes it is very difficult to get the agreements that we would like from the provinces. I suggest that the province of Quebec is a perfect example, when there were barriers to the free exchange of skilled labour and jobs and employment across the border that is merely the Ottawa River.

[Supply, February 15th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate of course. I will begin by saying that I applaud the Bloc Quebecois for bringing forth a motion like this in the sense that it is certainly a motion very worthy of debate. Too often opposition motions are merely designed to try to discredit the government or to gain cheap political points, but in this case this genuinely is a motion that deserves the kind of debate it has been getting today.

I have to say it is hard to mix one's own work and to try to follow a debate like this because each member who has spoken has had much to contribute and unfortunately I have not been able to follow every speech. I will say, however, that when it comes to deciding how I will vote on this issue I will, before I finally cast my ballot, look at the full Hansard and consider every argument that was put forward.

On the surface, however, from where I sit now, from what I have heard and from what I have read of this particular issue, I find myself half supporting the motion rather than supporting it fully. I certainly do believe that there is a great deal to be said in having a debate on this kind of subject before a treaty is finally ratified. Where I have difficulty is the part of the motion that says, and I should read the motion:

That this House demand that the government bring any draft agreement on the Free Trade Zone of the Americas before the House so that it may be debated and put to a vote before ratification—

The reality is that the government has a majority in this House and if this were put to this House after debate for ratification, what would happen is that the government would simply use its majority and it would go through.

In that sense it is a waste of the House's time, although I use that term very advisedly because in fact no debate in this House is a waste of the House's time.

A better way, it seems to me, to approach this is to do what happened just a few nights ago and have an emergency debate. We had, I guess, six hours of debate on the farm crisis the other night, and this was initiated in fact by the opposition I do believe. Well, both sides, actually. From the backbenches in one sense. That was an excellent debate. It touched on many, many aspects of the farm crisis and I think people watching probably gained much from it.

This whole question of a free trade zone for the Americas, which is coming up as a topic of conversation or a topic of negotiation, I should say, at the summit of the Americas in Quebec City in April, is an issue that has broad ramifications for the country. I would suggest that it goes even further than that. It has international ramifications and I think a debate would be very much in order.

Just to give you a little bit of history, Mr. Speaker, the summit that is coming up in April is part of a progress of summits that actually goes back to 1956. There was the first summit involving the Organization of American States. That was followed by a larger summit in 1967 which was initiated, I believe, if memory serves me right, by President Kennedy. That led to an attempt to bring Latin America under a free trade zone to the exclusion of the United States and the exclusion of Canada.

That did not work out in the long run, but the idea remained. The idea just sort of went into limbo for a long time. It was restarted by President Clinton in 1994 primarily because the world had changed dramatically. What had happened, the Soviet Union had collapsed; the east-west confrontation had ended; and the world suddenly became a patchwork of states, each trying to gain political advantage and, even more important, economic advantage.

Then, Mr. Speaker, you saw this progress starting in the very early nineties toward a World Trade Organization, toward global free trade in the broadest sense. We have gone very far in that direction, far in that direction in the sense that global free trade now involves countries that can trade with Canada, and the United States for that matter, and trade to their advantage and to our advantage.

Just in passing, I believe I am splitting my time with someone. I believe it is the secretary of state for international development. I certainly am sure that she will be listening to what I have to say and building on it when her turn comes.

Anyway, to carry on with the story, and I had better carry on fairly rapidly, the summit arises out of global free trade, the collapse of the Soviet Union and initiative by President Clinton. Initial talks were held in Miami in 1994 and one of the things that came out of those talks was the concept of a free trade zone of the Americas.

Remember, Mr. Speaker, these talks are not just about economics. I think as a result of the change in geo-politics, if you will, and geo-economics, it was recognized that it was in the Americans' interest, in the interest of the United States, to form closer alliances politically, economically and even militarily, and all of these issues are on the table when we come to a summit.

But the other aspect to the Bloc's motion that interested me was this concept of a North American free trade zone because I think something more is going on there than what has been the subject of the debates even in the newspapers.

I get the sense that what is happening here is that the Americans are perceiving a need to build a kind of firewall around the rest of the world: put this wall around North and South America in a sense to look after the possibility that someday they may have to shut out some of the rest of the world.

Individual colleagues made observations about human rights. I remember the member for Medicine Hat was commenting on the contradiction that we have when a country like Canada or the United States supports a third world country, only to deny access to their goods and put tariffs on their goods because of human rights problems.

We can take the example of some countries in the far east that have now just about entirely taken over the manufacture of textiles, or rugs for that matter, where these goods are manufactured in labour conditions that would be unacceptable in North America.

We face a dilemma there because if we shut off those goods, and I would suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, the shirt that I am wearing right now was probably manufactured at very, very low cost in a third world country.

It is my impression that the United States and Canada perceive that we cannot carry on global free trade indefinitely under such circumstances when we are indeed encouraging even child labour in these third world countries, which want to do it because they want to sell the product here, but we get into this terrible contradiction.

So the answer would appear to be something like a global free trade zone where standards can be set for human rights for the way labour is utilized to produce product, and at the same time preserve a market that will be sufficiently large for the United States to benefit primarily and the rest of us to benefit secondarily.

In the long term I have a great deal of sympathy for those protesters that appeared at Seattle and some of these other summits because I think we have to be very careful when we look at global free trade, or even the free trade of the Americas, that what we may be doing is creating dependencies that may put off a crisis among human beings, a crisis in terms of being able to produce product and feed ourselves that we may have to face in the years to come.

[Employment Insurance Act, February 13th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I wanted to speak in this debate simply to make one basic statement, and that is that I make no apology as a member on this side for the legislation that this government brought in a few years ago that reformed and changed the unemployment insurance, as it was then called, to employment insurance.

In the same breath I also would say that I support the changes that are before the House now, but the point that is important to me, and I think that I can speak for certainly many of the people in my constituency, is that employment insurance could not stay the way it had been for decades. It had to change and I think it still has to change. This is a temporary fix at most and what the government tried to do a few years ago, in my mind, was absolutely correct.

We as members of parliament here represent our constituencies and different regions of the country and, more important, different economic opportunities. I take the point that was mentioned in one of the newspapers recently that this debate seems to go on regional lines and that we have on one side the western argument where they are not in need of employment insurance as much as Atlantic Canada and so on and so forth.

It is not a regional issue at all, but it is an issue of economic opportunity in particular constituencies. In my constituency the economic opportunities have long been very good. My riding is west of Hamilton and for a very long time there was a very successful manufacturing industry in Hamilton and indeed there was a lot of wealth in the region. While many people certainly were on employment insurance from time to time, or unemployment insurance, for the most part they were not as dependent upon it as those communities perhaps that are more resource based, where there are tremendous fluctuations in price for commodities that can lead indeed to sudden intervals of unemployment and where indeed there has to be a safety net.

When I was young, and I still like to think I am young, when I was entering the workforce out of high school, in my family my father was a working class Englishman but it was a point of pride that was inculcated in our household that if we could possibly help it we did not go on unemployment insurance.

I have paid into it for many, many years, and when I started in the workforce I worked in the local foundry in my community and I worked in a number of the manufacturing plants in Hamilton, chiefly to earn money for my education, but a job was a job and our family did not have much money and I certainly had to get out there and earn my keep.

Never did I ever think that employment insurance, or unemployment insurance as it was then known, was my entitlement. I never felt, and I still do not feel, that simply because I may have put many, many thousands of dollars into the unemployment insurance program over my career, I do not feel that it is something I should be entitled to simply because I put the money in.

The way I was brought up to look at unemployment insurance was that it really genuinely was an insurance program for those who were unfortunate in their employment and suddenly lost work. That is what I think it should be now and I support it 100% in that context, but as time went on abuses did creep into the system. In my own community there were some very, very obvious abuses at the time of the amendments we made to the legislation a few years ago.

One of the most notable ones was this whole question of seasonal employment. The example that comes to mind most graphically in my region was where the school boards would hire the clerical staff, the janitorial staff and the custodial staff for 10 months of the year and then fire them for two months. Then they would go on unemployment insurance and then they would be rehired after the cycle.

This obviously became a culture that the staff at the schools came to accept, that it was their entitlement to be working for 10 months of the year and then get unemployment for two months.

What was actually happening in this process, in my view, was the school boards and the provinces that financed the school boards, instead of giving a fair salary to the workers based on 12 months of the year, what they were doing was that they were giving a lesser salary and getting the top-up from the taxpayer, indeed not from the taxpayer but from those who were putting generally into the employment insurance fund.

I always felt and I still feel that this is wrong, that this is not what employment insurance was ever meant to be. Madam Speaker, you can go across the spectrum and you will find, you could find, many examples of this where employers deliberately took advantage of the employment and unemployment insurance program in order to give less wages and indeed to in another sense increase their profits, because when an employer can give less wages by hiring a person for only six or eight months when in fact they should be hiring them for 12 months, what they do is they lower their cost of operation and in fact widen their profits.

I thought it was very, very appropriate to try to address this problem of deliberate seasonal employment for the benefit not of the workers but for the benefit of the employer, so the attempt that was done a few years ago to address seasonal workers I thought was very appropriate.

Another side of the equation is when we look out of my particular area to the country and we look into those ridings—I like to think of it; it might be in Ontario; it might be in Nova Scotia; it might be in Alberta or British Columbia—where the work is seasonal because it is resource based, this creates something of a problem too in another sense.

If we have a resource base, a resource that has been exploited, be it wood, be it fish, that relies on the workers to work for six or eight months of the year and then be off on employment insurance for four months of the year as a regular year over year thing, what we are in fact doing is that we are subsidizing the collection of that resource. That is fine in the one sense, but what then happens is that we run the danger of overexploiting a resource. If people can cut trees or harvest fish at lower than the real cost and deliver them to the marketplace, then we are artificially inflating our ability to exploit that resource.

Consequently, because I really believe that we have an obligation to protect the forest, I really believe we have an obligation to protect the fisheries and any of these other resource based industries, I found it very difficult sometimes to contemplate this idea that we automatically think it is the right thing to do to subsidize the employment insurance resource based industry.

Madam Speaker, one of the reasons why I support this legislation is there is another side to this equation: if you take that attitude too literally, not only would I be subject to accusations of being a rabid right winger but quite apart from that, if you take it too literally then you are not giving other parts of Canada an opportunity to maintain their communities.

Let us just separate regionalism for a minute and just look at northern Ontario. There are many, many communities in northern Ontario based on mining and the forestry. I think it is absolutely incumbent upon all of us as members of parliament to sustain those communities and their cultural traditions as long as we can. Madam Speaker, you have to strike a balance when you are thinking in terms of employment insurance and its impact on resource industries.

I do support the changes that we see here today because I think we have tried to make some adjustments because we did not fully appreciate the impact of what we were doing before. But time is passing. We are now into another century and we have to realize that even a program like employment insurance has to be revisited and modernized.

I thought there was a very wonderful suggestion being floated around over on the other side, and that was the suggestion that maybe employment insurance should be applied to self employed people. I think that is a very worthy suggestion from the opposition and should be explored.

[Speech From The Throne, February 9th, 2001]

Actually, Madam Speaker, that is not done by the whip. The whip does not attempt to interfere in private member's business. What was actually happening with that, and it was something that evolved when the legislation got very controversial because it was not always well thought out, is that I think the person responsible for private members' business was sending notices around indicating the government's position. All it does is indicate usually the Department of Justice's position on it.

That was the initiative of the member who was the chairman of the subcommittee on private members' business at that time, not the member for Mississauga Centre I should stress. It was a subsequent member.

It was a very, very poor practice and I never want to give the impression that we have perfected the operation of private members' business on this side or on the other side. I am hoping that in this parliament that will be discontinued and we will not do that, because I felt the pain of that when my access to information bill came before the House. I think some members were influenced by what was before them on their desks and I hope that will stop.

I have to say further that I have watched that side, particularly that party, particularly when it was under the leadership of the member for Calgary Southwest, and there was not a ripple of dissent during most private members' bills. There was always unanimity. On this side we have had free votes. We have voted contrary to the government's preference more than 2000 times. That is 2000 votes since free votes were instituted for private members' business.

No, what Canadians need to see during a vote is to have the camera panned and watch everyone on the other side jump up and down like monkeys. On this side you will see dissent on private members' business, Madam Speaker, and that is healthy dissent.

[Speech From The Throne, February 9th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, the answer is clearly speed and target. What we had to do is that we had to get a break on fuel taxes to the people who needed it most. The problem with just an across the board rebate is of course that it benefits the rich and the people who do not need it quite as desperately as those who do. We are definitely a government that, if we are going to respond, we are able to respond to what I think was a real crisis in fuel prices. We responded quickly. If we had chosen the rebate route it would have taken about a year and it would have helped a lot of people who do not need help.

[Speech From The Throne, February 9th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, actually I am sure the member knew that quite well, but there is some hesitancy on the other side of the House to want to acknowledge that in fact we have advanced the opportunities of backbench MPs and we have advanced private members' business.

There seems to be a theme of the criticism coming from the opposition that it wants to demean the opportunities of being a member of parliament. It wants to demean the fact of members of parliament having all kinds of opportunities. The very opportunity to speak in this place is an enormous opportunity that other Canadians do not have.

Coming back to my theme, and it is relevant to the Speech from the Throne because the throne speech is all about where parliament is going in the near term, where I will lead in my speech is to the fact that indeed there is going to be a new incentive and new efforts to expand private members' business.

Let me return to the history because it is very important to understand that expanding private members' business and having free votes is not as easy as it seems. In theory it seems great; in fact it is very difficult.

As the members on the opposite side will know only too well in the matter of free votes, it took them years before their leaders would allow them to have free votes on private members' business. We could see that on this side because they always voted in unison on private members' business, always in unison, and surely there would be some dissent on that side, one or two, but no, it was always the same.

On this side of course there were MPs who would support opposition private members' bills, and opposition private members' bills actually did pass. I remember there was one from the Bloc Quebecois dealing with the medical use of marijuana. That was an opposition private member's bill and it passed.

It received support from the backbench MPs here. It had nothing to do with the cabinet. It had everything to do with the backbench MPs on this side recognizing that an opposition MP had an excellent bill and that it should be supported, and it was supported.

On this side of the House I remember a Liberal member introduced a private member's bill that determined that those who would deliberately circumvent the Access to Information Act should be subject to a fine and even jail term. That succeeded. It was riding of Brampton West—Mississauga and that was a major step forward.

That did not occur prior to 1990. It just did not simply happen. The opposition, particularly the Canadian Alliance alias the Reform or however we say it, has never been willing to recognize that because it is not in its interest.

Private members' business and free votes brings with it significant problems. Also, introducing private members' bills that have real substance brings in significant problems. The reality is that individual members do not have the resources of government or even the resources of an opposition party to do the kind of due diligence on a weighty subject pertaining to private members' business that perhaps has to be done.

What happens and what we have found on all sides of the House is that the member may advance a very important private member's initiative and the government and the bureaucracy may genuinely find problems that have not been considered.

We wind up with a situation where the government knows that the bill has a very negative impact that the member is not considering. So the government is opposed on the advice of the bureaucracy in the Department of Justice.

Yet the backbench MPs on this side not considering it in the kind of depth that the government is considering the issue and the opposition MPs wanting to encourage a private member's initiative on this side or that side, what happens in the end is that the private member's bill, and several have actually done this, can get through the whole process because it is free votes on this side and get through third reading and actually go on to the Senate and be fundamentally flawed.

This was a problem that those of us on this side who were very interested in private members' business did not anticipate. The Senate on a couple of occasions blocked private members' bills that had passed this House. This is a very significant step because the Senate is not entitled to block a government bill. It can return a government bill to the House for amendment but it cannot actually stop it. The Senate has actually blocked private members' bills.

I would say that what we are looking at here is a very important opportunity for the Senate because I think it is very important to give private members lots of opportunity to bring in bills of significance and substance; but there has to be a check somewhere. Somebody has to do the kind of due diligence that the member himself cannot do and that other members are unlikely to do.

This is another reality about private members' business. When a private member submits a bill, and it is in second reading debate and then it comes to second reading vote, often members want to support that bill on all sides of the House simply because they want to support a private member. They want to support initiatives that come from backbench MPs, be they on this side or that side. What happens is then private members' legislation can escape through the House of Commons and it may not be as well thought out as it should be.

So what I hope in the future is that we will see significant activity on the part of the Senate in examining private members' legislation that reaches the Senate so that the bills, if they do get royal assent, are really bills that will help Canadians and are of value to the nation.

In the free votes I was mentioning that is a problem too, because the fact of the matter is that many members do not study the private members' legislation in the same way as they might government legislation, and in fact the reality, when it comes to party discipline or free votes, is that many MPs on both sides of the House do not usually look in detail at any legislation, be it government legislation or private members' legislation.

Therefore, when it comes to a free vote situation then it becomes incumbent upon the MPs to examine the bills in great detail and often they do not. That is the reality, and they probably never shall. Somewhere along the line, if private members' legislation is going to be a useful addition to parliamentary life, we have to make sure that legislation is examined in depth.

We had a problem on this side when it came to free votes. Because the members are not always reading the private members' legislation or considering the full impact, what was happening was that the backbench MPs on this side, when a private member's bill—even though it is a free vote—was being voted on after second reading, would watch the members stand along the front benches. And because they had not read the legislation and because people want to generally be on side with their leadership, they would take their cue from the front benches. What you would see was everyone standing at the two benches here, and then everyone on the back benches. To address this problem the subcommittee on private members' business held consultations with backbench MPs that went over several years and issued a report, first a report just before the 1997 election and then a final report after the election.

Thanks to the guidance of the chairman of that committee, the member for Mississauga Centre, a number of very, very important recommendations to improve private members' business were made in that report and subsequently adopted by the government. One of those recommendations, which is now the practice of the House and which led to a change in the standing order, is the idea that when the House is voting on a private member's bill the Speaker will count the votes from the back benches forward.

So any Canadian watching a private members' vote will see that the vote is counted from behind. That way, the true backbench MPs do not have the opportunity to take the cue from the front bench. Indeed, it has encouraged them to pay more attention to private members' legislation and it gives the opportunity to the member who has the bill, be it an opposition member or a government member, to actually solicit support.

That has been an enormous step forward in private members' business, just an enormous step forward. I think, if I remember correctly, because I was involved as a witness before the committee, that idea in fact was the idea of the member for Mississauga Centre. I think she has significantly changed parliamentary life just by that one change to the standing order.

That report had other innovations as well. One of the great problems with private members' business is the fact that in order to have one's bill advanced for debate in the House it goes into a kind of lottery. In fact, every now and then, about three times a year, the Commons clerical staff literally put their hands into a hat and draw 30 names of members of parliament. If those members of parliament have motions or private members' bills submitted at first reading, then those bills can go forward and be debated in the House.

Madam Speaker, I have to tell you that I have put in a number of private members' bills over the years and I have never been picked in that lottery in six years—six years, Madam Speaker. The mathematics, the statistics, of that process are such that with 301 MPs it is possible to never be picked for 10 years.

So another innovation that was brought in by the subcommittee on private members' business was the concept of a member of parliament getting the support of 100 members of parliament from all sides of the House. Actually what it breaks down to is 100 members from at least 3 parties, in which 2 of those parties would have at least 10 members supporting the bill. It is a little complicated, but the point is that the member could show broad support from the backbench MPs. It could buy his bill support to bypass the lottery and go directly on the order paper.

That innovation, I think, was a superb innovation because it at least reduces the element of chance. Or to say it another way, it makes it not a factor of chance alone to advance a significant bill. I think that was a very important innovation.

However, in practice it did not work very well. It had a lot of problems because a lot of members found it very difficult, because when they were given a list asking for the support, and the idea was to write their signature, they were torn between whether they should sign it because the bill was good or whether they should sign it because they liked the member who had the legislation.

It is the old story when we have free votes. For free votes, be it signing your signature to something that is going directly onto the order paper or whether it is a free vote on the actual vote going through the House, the problem is that if we do not do our due diligence we might decide that we want to support the legislation simply because we like the member who is putting it forward or because the member is on our side or whatever else.

I guess the jury is still out on that process. I do believe that the subcommittee for private members' business, which has been re-struck just recently, is going to reconsider that matter and see whether there is a way of amending that bit of legislation to make it work a little better.

I should mention, that I am happy to report to the House that the chairman of the subcommittee on private members' business is the member for Mississauga Centre, so can I expect her to give due attention to improving private members' business in every way, including this.

Finally, there is another problem with private members' legislation that I have not so far touched upon. One of the advantages that the government has when it introduces legislation is that the government has all the power of government and the bureaucracy to fight off the special interests that attack legislation. Any bill that is presented before the House, if it has any substance at all, is going to be the subject of attack from special interest groups, because the reality in society is that there are always those who support and there are always those who are against. So in the species at risk bill that is coming up right now, you can be very, very sure that there is going to be an enormous pressure that will come forward from various special interest groups.

So it was, with a private member's bill that I put forward on reforming the Access to Information Act last year. It was defeated in this House, a bill that would have advanced transparency of government. It was defeated in this House by opposition members. It was defeated primarily by the Bloc Quebecois and primarily by the Canadian Alliance. It was supported primarily by the NDP and supported by the Conservatives. It was defeated, not because they were against private members' business. It was defeated because every one of those MPs over there was subject to pressure from special interest groups, because when you bring transparency to government, when you bring transparency to crown corporations, they are going to put a lot of pressure on individual MPs.

There is a lot to do here, but we are making a lot of progress, perhaps not with as much help as I would like from the opposite side.

[Speech From The Throne, February 9th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I am going to dedicate my remarks primarily to the issue of private members' business.

I am also delighted to follow the member for St. Albert so that I can also put on the record some of my observations about that fuel rebate before I go into the main text of my speech.

I would point out to the member for St. Albert that I have an older single woman in her eighties living in the village who lost her husband many years ago. She lives in my village. She lives in an Insulbrick house. Her total income is about $12,000 a year. It is only old age security. If the government had not acted as fast as possible on that fuel rebate, she would have felt the cold.

Moreover, low income Canadians who do not pay for their own home heating fuel, who are tenants of landlords, also benefit from this because, as the Liberal member mentioned, what happens with landlords is when the fuel price goes up they pass on the cost to their tenants.

When those tenants are low income tenants, they are going to feel that pinch. My view is that the government did exactly the right thing. It did away with all the potential red tape that would have come from the conservative proposals we heard opposite. What it did was it got it out as fast as possible. Obviously it was imperfect but at least 80% or 90% of Canadians who needed that rebate, whether they needed it directly or indirectly, did benefit.

Let us just get it straight. If the government did act in a compassionate fashion, and if it had taken the course that was proposed by the Canadian Alliance, then the people like the one that I just mentioned, people who want to live alone but live independently and have small means, they would have suffered. I can tell you, Madam Speaker, the snow is deep in Ontario as well as out west and as well as on the east coast.

I really want to dedicate my remarks to the issue of private members' business. This is relevant to the Speech from the Throne because at various times during the speeches the issue of opportunities for MPs has come up and whether or not backbench MPs in particular and opposition MPs can have a meaningful legislative impact on the House.

I think what has been missing from the debate is the opposition has tended to suggest that there have been no attempts at reform, no attempts at expanding the opportunities of backbench MPs. Well in fact, precisely the opposite has occurred.

I would like, for the benefit of Canadians, to just give a little history of private members' business since 1993 when the Liberals came to power after the Conservatives. If the House will recall, we came back with quite a large majority.

Theoretically, when a government has a large majority, it can do whatever it pleases in the sense that it really can afford to ignore the backbench, but in fact, this government did not.

At the very outset, this government, at least as far as its own members were concerned, decreed that all private members' business would be subject to free votes on this side. As a government, we cannot dictate to what opposition leaders say to their own MPs, but on this side from 1993 onward it was free votes.

Second, the government invited, not initially willingly, but after a little while the government invited private members' business from this side, as a matter of fact, from anyone, of more substance.

Prior to 1993, ordinarily a private member's bill would deal with an extremely non-controversial, even trivial topic, something that the government did not have to worry about, such as a name change or things that cost the government no money, that would have no potential negative political impact.

One of the things that changed after 1993 was that the government showed a willingness to accept private members' bills that dealt with more substance. Indeed, we started out in that line and there were some notable successes.

I remind the House on all sides that—