Business Of The House  Mr. Speaker, I have three motions I propose to put to the House with unanimous consent. I move: That, if a recorded division is required during the budget debate on Thursday, February 24, 1994, the said division shall be deferred until Tuesday, March 8, 1994 at 6.30 p.m. (Motion agreed to.)

Supply  Mr. Speaker, in conclusion our Prime Minister said there should be a referendum and the party supported that. There was a referendum because pressure was put on the government. That is important to note. In terms of concluding this debate, I can only say as the member from Waterloo and as someone who believes he is accountable to his constituents, I have absolutely no problem in terms of how we have been handling petitions and the way we can feed them into committee.

Supply  Mr. Speaker, I have two questions. I wonder if my hon. colleague would define what a major petition and a serious motion are. Those are two terms he used in his comments. Is it numbers? Is it the issue itself? Is it something else? I am also wondering whether my hon. colleague is not being somewhat, or perhaps quite a lot, mischievous.

Supply  Mr. Speaker, let me be brief. The question has come up whether a petition with a million signatures on it should be debated in the House. Maybe we should consider something like that. What if a petition came before the House with a million signatures saying that official bilingualism should be discontinued in Canada.

Supply  Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Mississauga South. The fact that it is complicated does not rule it out. Most things we do here are confusing and complicated. If members would look at the Order Paper and the motion put down by my friend from Edmonton Southwest, the one we are now debating, the answer to his question and the question put previously by the gentleman from North Vancouver is answered.

Supply  Mr. Speaker, my friend from Timiskaming-French River makes the very important point that if one governs and makes decisions, and if members are elected on the basis of one issue, the conundrum arises when one has, for example, a healthy majority for capital punishment in the member's riding but on another issue many of that healthy majority are on the other side, and on a third issue it is on a different side.

Supply  Mr. Speaker, I too want to thank my colleague for reminding us all that we are here not only for our constituents but for all Canadians. In a previous presentation some reference was made to the fact that had the party which proposed this particular debate known of the mechanisms existing so certain issues could be brought forward, that they could represent constituents fairly, perhaps it would not have been done.

Supply  Mr. Speaker, I think this is an attempt to structure members of Parliament to the extent that there will remain a very narrow scope with which we can use our objectivity and our determination as to what we should do in this House of Commons. What bothers me about this motion is the cynicism, that members of Parliament are not capable of determining how they should work to govern the people of Canada.

Supply  Mr. Speaker, I hate to put it this way but I am going to repeat this slowly. The motion today asked the government to change the rule of the House-this is the first thing that is wrong with it-in order for us to have a vote on petitions. There is already such a mechanism and many members have availed themselves of the privilege of putting motions before the House-everyone except Reform Party MPs.

Supply  Mr. Speaker, I am perfectly aware of the fact that no vote was sought, although the opposition has the right to seek votes on any opposition motion. Such a vote would be a vote of confidence. Second, it is not a matter of whether the motion itself is out of order. Of course it is not out of order.

Questions On The Order Paper  Today, Mr. Speaker, marks the beginning of answers. Question No. Q-3 will be answered. Question No. 3-

Fisheries And Oceans  Mr. Speaker, I know the hon. member would want me to be absolutely crystal clear in the major findings of the report which was conducted entirely outside government, not by the department of fisheries, not by Treasury Board, but as the member pointed out by Peat Marwick Thorne and by the chief forensic auditor of that firm.

National Arts Centre  Mr. Speaker, it is obviously the government that determines salaries by order in council. It is also obvious that the Prime Minister has already ordered a review of all salary levels set by order in council to ensure that Canadian taxpayers' money is not wasted. It has already been done.

National Arts Centre  Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member is aware, Mr. DesRochers was appointed by the National Arts Centre's board of directors during the previous government's mandate, and the decision to fire him was made within the powers granted to the board of directors. The details of his contract are confidential.

Federal Grants  Mr. Speaker, they can claim all they want that the leader of the Leader of the Opposition was not in office exactly at the time of the Oka crisis, but in an article from the Saturday edition of Le Soleil , the president of the police association, Mr. Jocelyn Turcotte, is reported as stating that the smuggling problem on native reserves started in 1988, when the Leader of the Opposition was a member of the Mulroney cabinet.