Ian McClelland

[Committees Of The House, March 4th, 1996]

Maybe a Reformer should sit on the membership of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society.

[Government Business, March 4th, 1996]

In those first two years the Liberal government bent over backward to ensure it did not do or say anything that could in any way be interpreted as offending anyone in Quebec, more particularly the Bloc. The Bloc, whether the Liberals like it or not, represents many voters in Quebec, just as the Reform Party represents many voters in other jurisdictions. They were totally afraid of doing or saying anything that could in any way be interpreted as offending the Bloc. This included the election of officers in committee.

Think about it. There is a political party in the House of Commons, the Bloc, whose raison d'être is to take the province it represents out of Confederation. The Bloc's raison d'être is to break up the country. Its members have the perfect right to do so and they have the perfect right to be here. It is an expression of the strength of our democracy that they can be and that we can debate it. Nobody is shooting at anybody. That is a sign of strength in our democracy, not a sign of weakness. It is certainly my hope that at the end of the day Quebec will continue to be a province within Canada.

I will say that we are having a much more honest and open debate about the future of Quebec and the future of Canada today than we have ever had in the House. It is only through addressing things honestly that we are ever going to resolve the problems we have as a country.

While I do not concur and I did not appreciate it, I can understand the fact that the government in the first two years of its mandate bent over backward not to offend the Bloc, particularly in committee. However today is another day. The referendum was held in Quebec; the separatists lost. They lost on a question that was fuzzy. Here we are in the House of Commons today and have we started to take on the Bloc or the separatists head on? No we have not. The Liberals have gone right back to their attitude of not saying or doing anything that could in any way offend any member of the Bloc.

It seems to me we should be putting our efforts into making sure there is an honest representation of what the rest of the country feels rather than bending over backward to appease the people who would break up the country. It is time that everyone put all of their cards on the table and dealt with the issues as they are. I suspect that might be something the Liberals might be thinking of doing now because they know that appeasement has not worked. The problem is that the Prime Minister said this when he was out west. He mused about it, and now all of a sudden this is no longer part of the debate. What is part of the debate? Where is the debate? Why do we not have this on the table?

I will conclude by coming back to the fact that the government has the right and the responsibility to bring forward legislation it promised during the election campaign under which it was able to get the support of the people who voted for the Liberals. They should keep the promises they made and which they put in writing, like getting rid of the GST. Having made it, that is one of the promises they should keep. They have the right and the responsibility to bring that legislation forward.

The only avenue for the rest of us to have meaningful input into what we do here in representing our constituents is through private members' business. Private members' business and government business should be treated discretely. They should not be lumped together in an omnibus bill or motion and we are forced to vote against private members' business that we support. It is a kind of blackmail.

I will spend a couple of seconds talking about the how and the why. There is not very much that cannot be done here in the House of Commons with all parties if we treat each other with respect. If the government has an idea that it wishes to change the way the House of Commons works and how legislation is brought forward, then it would be appropriate for the government to come to the whips of the other parties represented in the House and say this is what it would like to do. Why can we not work together collegially, rather than having the government use the power of its majority, sort of a jackboot diplomacy, over the backbench MPs of its own side and of the opposition?

[Government Business, March 4th, 1996]

The Prime Minister's Office. That is the way our system works so we have to accept it.

During the last Parliament one of the promises the Liberals made to the people of Canada in order to get their support, to get their vote which gave them a majority in the House of Commons, was that they were going to change the way Parliament worked. They would make it more inclusive and would involve opposition parties in the day to day operation and would give opposition members as well as backbench Liberal members a say and a feeling they were participating in the affairs of the country. They promised to take the affairs of the government out of the backrooms and put the affairs of the country and government into the House of Commons and into the committee rooms.

Those promises were genuinely made and genuinely felt because the Liberals had just come through eight years in the wilderness. They had spent eight years atoning for the sins they committed while they were in government and in power.

Is it not funny how times change. It did not take very long before the government decided it was going to be absolute in its authority and in its control over all of the happenings here in Parliament. For the first two years in government, the Liberals knew they were facing a referendum in Quebec. The referendum would be on the question of whether Quebec should stay or go.

[Government Business, March 4th, 1996]

The problem is this Parliament as with previous Parliaments is really run by the strategists in the parties and they are trying to figure out how to get re-elected.

[Government Business, March 4th, 1996]

They will be held accountable.

I apologize to members opposite if they are trying to find some thread to what I am saying. I am trying to find it again as well.

The power of the government in our House of Commons is absolute. I was quite surprised to learn just exactly how absolute that power is. I thought there would be an opportunity for not just members of Parliament in opposition and in the House but members of Parliament in committee to work in a much more collegial atmosphere in order to try to improve legislation. We are here for the benefit of the taxpaying Canadian citizen, for all of the citizens.

Given the fact everything the government does is considered a question of confidence, I was somewhat disappointed to learn that the whole notion of being able to lose a vote or to lose an argument or to look at legislation as a possible win-win rather than a win-lose is missing. It is missing here; it is missing in committee.

Members on this side feel frustrated as I am sure members opposite do when they are asked by constituents: "Why do you not do something about this or that? Here is a situation that obviously does not make sense. Why can you not do something about it?" When we say that we are not the government, people reply: "You are the government, you are a member of Parliament. You are part of the government". We say that yes we are, but we are not the people in charge and they ask: "Well, who is in charge?" The Liberals are in charge.

[Government Business, March 4th, 1996]

Members surrounding me are saying that perhaps the government should have been held accountable and should be accountable.

[Government Business, March 4th, 1996]

To the member opposite who just said to stop dreaming, it is his nightmare and my dream. They never thought they would see themselves back over there on that side of the House either.

I understand the way the government works. It is the right and the responsibility of the opposition to oppose and the government to propose and very much of what we do here sometimes goes by rote. We automatically oppose because that is what we are supposed to do. It is supposed to test and strengthen the legislation the government proposes.

[Government Business, March 4th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to confine my comments to three general areas.

First, I would like to speak to the notion of why we are debating this in the first place, rather than the how. Quite a lot of the debate has dealt with the mechanics of how bills are introduced or reintroduced and not a whole lot of thought has been given to why bills are introduced or reintroduced.

Second, I would like to spend a couple of minutes talking about the difference between private members' business and government business and why, in my opinion, private members' business should be treated discretely and differently than government legislation.

Third, I would like to touch on what really should be the power of the government, exactly how encompassing and how overpowering is the power of the government.

I will begin with the third point. Those of us in the Chamber are acutely aware of how this place works, but many Canadians are not. After being elected I came here full of hope, inspiration and with the brightest of lights shining in my eyes. I thought as the member of Parliament representing the people of Edmonton Southwest, I was going to have a say in how the government ran the country. Well, was I surprised. I am sure many Liberal backbenchers found themselves in quite the same state of surprise. As a matter of fact I think some of the cabinet ministers may have been surprised. I am not suggesting that the government is alone. To my knowledge, all governments in Canada run on a premise which is: "How do we go about getting re-elected?" The first objective after being elected is how to get re-elected because power is everything. If one does not have power in politics one might as well be washing floors somewhere because not very much is accomplished. Yes, one can have some influence with luck. That is what private member's business is all about. It is all of the backbenchers on the government and on the opposition sides who are trying to make our country work not a lot better but a little bit better, just incrementally to trying to do something worthwhile.

The path of private members' business through the House to become legislation is laborious and long. There are all kinds of checks and balances. Private members' bills very rarely become law. It is not part of the government agenda.

When the throne speech was read there was not one single word about the government saying: "We know we have 295 people in the House of Commons, most of whom are here for the right reasons: to make our country work better. Therefore, we are going to see what we can do to use private members' business to create legislation".

It has never been that way. If good private members' legislation is introduced very often it is co-opted by the government and we will see it rearing its head again as government legislation. Perhaps that is not all bad. It does not matter. If the legislation is passed it has to go through this process.

However, private members' business is very different from government business. When government puts out an agenda it is its agenda to get re-elected. If that means it is going to do whatever it has to do to meet the requirements of the perceived wants of the

body politic that is what it is going to do. That is why governments change direction from time to time. That is why there are traditionally in a country different opinions of different values represented by different political parties.

In Canada we do not really have that differentiation. The Liberal Party changes its spots to meet whatever the expectations of the body politic are. It has worked successfully for most of our time as a country and it is likely that is the way it is going to be in the future. It does not really matter whether the left and the right or the yin and the yang is met because the country changes political parties or if the political party that is in power changes to meet the demands of the people. That happens. The government has the ability, the authority and the responsibility to bring forward whatever legislation it wants because it has a majority. It will introduce that legislation and that legislation will be passed. Nothing the opposition has to say will change that. Absolutely nothing will change the opinion of the government once it has its mind made up and it has a head of steam.

Therefore, the only possible way that any backbencher from the government side or the opposition side is able to have meaningful input into the affairs of the nation is through private members' business. These bills may be very meaningful or they may be relatively small but they are evidence of the fact that people have been elected who represent their constituents.

I have a vested interest in this debate because I have a private member's bill that made it through committee. If one is playing Snakes and Ladders, that is all the way up to just about the top of one set of ladders. The problem is that when one makes it over the top one is on the downhill slide again which is what happens with House business. When the the House prorogues and all of the business dies on the Order Paper that means all of the private members' business dies as well.

When I first heard that the government was planning on changing legislation to bring back its own business as well as private members' business, my immediate reaction was that we should be careful what we say because whatever is said on this side of the House is likely going to come back to haunt us when we get to the other side of the House. We have stacks and stacks and stacks of words that Liberal members on the government side, most of them cabinet ministers, said when another government tried to do exactly the same thing, that the government business should die and it should be brought back again. If they want to do so they should bring it back starting from square one.

My original reaction was that there is a fair amount of work to go through to get these things done. It goes through the legislative branch of the House of Commons. There is a lot of work to get legislation here. If the government has a majority, it is going to come back sooner or later, why not bring it back sooner rather than later? They are the government. We will do whatever they suggest, so why not just do it?

That brings us to the how and why of this debate and why we are having it in the first place. I think that most people on this side of the House see the reasonableness in the argument that if you are going to bring back legislation, why not bring it back in the way that is the most cost effective and the easiest, leaving aside the fact that the government very probably has absolutely nothing on its platter other than the legislation it had in the last session. We are waiting of course.

The government woke from its great slumber and has decided that national unity is going to find its place on the front burners. The problem is that the government does not have any legislation so let us reintroduce the legislation that was on the books. Fine, but if this is the plan, would it not make sense for the House leaders to get together?

I could spend all kinds of time going through the hypocrisy of the litany of members opposite. They stand on that side of the House and say black is black when on this side of the House we are saying white is white. I know that if I get too far down that road, sooner or later the same thing will happen to me. Imagine what the people who are watching this debate as it unfolds today are thinking.

[Business Of The House, March 1st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with some intent and some interest to the member opposite. He raised some good points about putting up procedural roadblocks for the sake of procedural roadblocks. We have not done that as a rule. I agree in that I do not think the Canadian people want to see this being done. However, the principle at stake here is whether or not we should simply acquiesce to whatever the government decides it is going to do and whether we should in our role as opposition stand up for what we think is right.

In this case the situation is that since the 35th Parliament started the government has supported the view that the nomination and election of vice-chairs for all committees should go to the Bloc, period. It has not been an open and free election. It has been a set up job from the very beginning. It is a sham of an election. Our intent is to bring this to the attention of Canadian citizens everywhere.

We would have no problem with the Bloc being elected to both vice-chairs or the vice-chair or the second vice-chair if it were a free and open election, if it were a secret election within the committee, but it is not. At every single committee I have attended, the chief government whip has sat in the committee room, watched, presided over, pointed fingers and said: "This is what you are going to do in this vote". This is a mockery of democracy.

Our point is not to be obstructive but to point out to the government and to Canadians that the government cannot be hypocritical. The Prime Minister cannot when he is in western Canada go on a radio or television program and say that it makes him sick when he looks across and sees the official opposition is a separatist party that will break up the country. Then when he gets back to Quebec he says exactly the opposite and at every possible opportunity he mollycoddles and appeases the Bloc and is so afraid to offend them. We are not afraid to offend them and if that offends the Liberal government, it should be offended.

[Rich Winter, March 1st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, character is the single most important defining element of a human being. Character is to do the right thing when no one is looking, to persevere when the going gets tough.

Colleagues, I ask you to join with me in acknowledging Mr. Rich Winter of Edmonton, a man who exemplifies character, a man who took on the entire professional hockey establishment to bring to an end an odious era in Canadian hockey history.

In January 1990, Mr. Winter at great personal expense lodged a complaint with the RCMP against Alan Eagleson. Over many of the six years between then and now, Mr. Winter was alone in pursuing the case, fighting the inertia of the entrenched legal, media and hockey worlds.

Today Mr. Eagleson is under U.S. indictment and an extradition request has been made to Canadian justice officials.

Mr. Winter, on behalf of all Canadians, I thank you for your inspiration. I thank you for being an example to all of us to relentlessly pursue our causes. And if the cause is right, then by your example we know that justice will prevail.