Mr. Speaker, we are certainly not ready for the question.
I thank the hon. member opposite for making that intervention. I notice it is the first intervention that has been made for quite some time by hon. members opposite. Obviously they are having an exceedingly difficult time trying to justify this move by the government. Indeed, they do not wish to participate in the debate to try to defend the actions of their government.
Perhaps it would be interesting to recap what has brought us to this point on this issue. Clearly, there has been another broken Liberal promise.
We seem to have been subjected over the last day and a half to a number of allegations from across the way that the Reform Party of Canada is wasting taxpayers' money and wasting the time of the House of Commons. I see that the few hon. members who are left across the way are nodding their heads. They agree that we are wasting time.
What this is all about is a matter of principle. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a lot of that in evidence on the other side of the House these days. In fact, I would submit that principles are in exceedingly short supply in the Liberal Party. The opinion across the way is that the Reform Party has a problem with principles, but we feel it is the Liberal Party of Canada which is constantly lacking in that department. Liberal members will not even get up to defend the position which they have taken on this issue.
Why are we in this situation in the House? Yesterday the government put a motion on the floor of the Chamber to appoint the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands to the vacant position of Deputy Chairman of Committees of the Whole. This was done despite the fact that the member himself was a co-author of a document some years ago when the Liberal Party of Canada was sitting on this side of the House. At that time four members of the Liberal Party drafted a document which became an appendix to the infamous red book. That book was the Liberal Party's platform which it took to the people of Canada during the 1993 election campaign.
The appendix was called "Reviving Parliamentary Democracy". It is certainly a grand title, something I think all Canadians believe we are in dire need of in this country, "Reviving Parliamentary Democracy: The Liberal Plan for House of Commons and Electoral Reform". Number 10 dealt with the independence of the Chair, in other words the independence of the Speaker in the House of Commons. It stated:
In order to enhance the independence of the Chair and in an effort to reduce the level of partisanship, when the Speaker is from the government party, two of the junior Chair officers should be from the opposition, so that the four presiding officer positions are shared equally by government and opposition.
It went on to say:
One of the most significant results of the McGrath round of procedural reforms was the decision that the Speaker should be elected by secret ballot by all members. This has gone a long way toward assuring members of the independence of the presiding officer.
The three deputy Speakers, however, remain in effect government appointees. As a consequence, when one of the junior officers is in the Chair, his or her independence and authority is less well established. Their authority would be greatly enhanced and the non-partisan nature of the Chair greatly augmented if the British practice of alternating the Chair positions between government and opposition were adopted. Thus, if the Speaker were from the government party, the Deputy Speaker would be from the opposition, the next officer from the government and so forth.
This is all quite admirable. Certainly all members of Parliament from all parties would agree that a procedure such as that should be instituted.
I note that in one part it is stated very clearly that the authority would be greatly enhanced if this procedure were adopted because deputy Speakers are not elected. It was the feeling of that committee of the Liberal Party of Canada that this type of process should be put in place. That is why it was added as an appendix to the red book. The Liberals ran on this issue. It was a promise they made in the days and weeks leading up to the 1993 election.
Earlier my colleague from Lisgar-Marquette spoke about what is a promise. He talked about the sanctity of marriage vows. He made a good case that it is one promise many Canadians believe is a promise that one simply does not break. The marriage vow of until death do us part means that couples stay together through thick and thin and through tough times. They work out their problems but they keep their promise. He quite eloquently made the case for that.
What constitutes the keeping of a promise? The member went on to say that there are many kinds of promises. Some are simply implied, some are spelled out, some are verbal and some are signed contracts. In other words, they are legally binding in the sense that one has signed one's name to the promise.
What constitutes the keeping of a promise? Simply put, in the case of government it has a very short time span in which to keep its promise. It is up to the government to display to the general public that when its members run for election either in a general election or a byelection that they will keep their word.
There is an old saying that a man is only as good as his word. That is something I was raised with. It is common knowledge in Peace River country where I come from. I heard that many times from my father when I was a youngster. I would submit that is a generic term which also applies to the other gender. We all are only as good and our credibility is only as good as our word. We have to keep that.
It reminds me of a promise that was made by a number of Liberals during the election but certainly none more so or more strongly or strenuously than the Deputy Prime Minister. The promise I am speaking of is the GST.
I get back to my point. What constitutes the keeping of a promise? Clearly the Deputy Prime Minister during the election campaign spoke many times that if they did not abolish, scrap or get rid of the GST she would resign. That is the promise that she made. Indeed finally through the pressure of the Reform Party of Canada and from the media and from the general public she was forced to honour that promise and resign.
I get back to what I was saying earlier. What constitutes the keeping of a promise? To my way of thinking, simply resigning and then saying "I'm going to run again" is hardly the keeping of a promise. Clearly what she implied when she said "I will resign if we do not scrap, kill, abolish the GST" was that she would quit, give up her seat.
I do not believe that the people of Canada believed that what she really meant was that she would just give it up until a byelection could be called at the cost of some $.5 million and then seek re-election to that same position. I do not believe that is keeping a promise.
A number of my colleagues have spoken quite eloquently about this subject. What the viewing public needs to understand is what is happening today and what are we really discussing here. Is it simply that the Reform Party is upset that the government intends to appoint the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands to one of the positions of deputy speaker of the House of Commons? Of course that is not the case.
I want to go on record as saying that I do not have any personal vendetta against the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands. That is not the case. I am certain that is not the case for any of my colleagues who have been speaking out. Many have reiterated during their remarks that this is not a case of attacking an individual or casting aspersions against an individual. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The reality is we believe a promise has been broken. Promises are very important, especially to this government. It has been said already today and indeed yesterday during the debate that this particular government and this particular Prime Minister have been going on and on at some length during the past, and certainly last weekend was an example of that during the love-in of the Liberal convention held here in Ottawa, about how many promises they have kept.
Clearly when a promise is as simple as this one is to keep, it is not a difficult promise to keep, the government could pick any opposition member. It does not have to be someone from the Reform Party. It could be anyone from the Bloc Quebecois or one of the independents to fill that position of deputy speaker. Then it would have lived up to its promise.
This particular member who represents Kingston and the Islands clearly would have lived up to the commitment that he made I believe to the people of Canada and to the electorate when he co-signed the document which was attached as an appendix to the Liberal red book.
Reformers believe that this debate is so very important. We are talking about integrity. We are talking about honesty. We are talking about credibility. We are talking about believeability.
From the red book in a chapter called "Governing with Integrity I quote directly the promise that was held out to Canadians before and during the 1993 election:
If government is to play a positive role in society, as it must, honesty and integrity in our political institutions must be restored.
The most important asset of government is the confidence it enjoys of the citizens to whom it is accountable. There is evidence today of considerable dissatisfaction with government and a steady erosion of confidence in the people and institutions of the public sector.
This erosion of confidence seems to have many causes: some have to do with the behaviour of certain elected politicians, others with an arrogant style of political leadership. The people are irritated with governments that do not consult them, or that disregard their views, or that try to conduct key parts of the public business behind closed doors.
I submit that part of this page out of the Liberal red book of campaign promises, "Creating Opportunity: The Liberal Plan for Canada", could have been written this afternoon.
It could be applied to the Liberal Party of Canada, to the existing government. We all know that it was written as a Liberal attack against the former Progressive Conservative government.
Lord knows it deserved to be chastized for the way it behaved over nine years, the way it betrayed Canada, the way it betrayed the promises it made to the Canadian people during two successive elections, 1984 and 1988.
It could have just as easily, I submit, have been written about the government we have in Canada today. I see that same arrogance that the Liberal Party was attacking in this document. I see that same arrogance very much in evidence around this place today.
I would like to go on in the time that I have remaining and talk about a specific promise that was made leading up to the election, another promise by the Liberal Party of Canada, one that I was personally made aware of during the election campaign. It impacted directly in some of the support that the Liberal Party got and some of the heat that the Reform Party of Canada took for being honest with the electorate.
This promise, like the promise of allowing for the appointment of alternating positions to the deputy speaker's position in the House of Commons, was contained in a side document to the red book. It is entitled "Food Security for Canadians and a Fair Return for Canadian Farmers". It is the Liberal agricultural policy proposals backgrounder dated May 1993.
This document under the subtitle "International Trade and Marketing: General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades" states: "The nature of agricultural production, trade and the global forces of change make it inevitable that farm and trade policies will have to be altered. Canada must make use of the GATT negotiations to aggressively defend and clarify article XI to maintain our supply managed programs, since the ongoing GATT negotiations provide an opportunity to make these changes in a multilateral framework of commitments and rules".
That sounded very good: "aggressively defend and clarify article XI".
That is what the Liberal Party of Canada and its candidates ran on in the 1993 election. I am sure all my colleagues in the Reform Party remember that. Certainly any Reformers who had dairy farms in their riding remember it. Reform was honest with dairy farmers, the supply managed sectors of agriculture, in what they were facing, what was coming down the pipe and Reform took the heat for that. We took the heat in all-candidates forums, on radio open line shows, but Reform stuck by what we said because we felt we had to be honest with Canadians during and after an election.
By the time the Liberals recognized what we were saying about this all along-