Bill C-311 (Historical)

Climate Change Accountability Act

An Act to ensure Canada assumes its responsibilities in preventing dangerous climate change

The Environment

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we could also compare Canada's and China's economic stimulus plans. There would be a difference there.

Instead of trying to sabotage environmental summits, the minister should produce a credible plan for reducing greenhouse gases. If we look at the fact that Conservative senators rejected Bill C-311 and that the government's continental approach is nothing more than a red herring to justify its inaction, it is clear that the minister is not truly ready to implement a plan to combat climate change.

Why is he undermining international negotiations? Why is he undermining negotiations and why does he not introduce a plan—

Opposition Motion—West Coast Oil Tanker Traffic

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Edmonton—Strathcona not only for sharing her time with me, but also for sharing her space with me here.

I am pleased to participate in the debate on today's opposition day motion moved by my colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley.

I wanted to join this debate because I have a few comments to make from a slightly different perspective than those offered today by my New Democratic colleagues. We have heard their forceful and informative presentations on the severe environmental consequences of hundreds of oil supertankers sailing through sensitive marine ecosystems, threatening the livelihood and way of life our beautiful western coastal communities and first nations.

We have also heard that a moratorium is not good enough. We need legislation and we need it now. Let me explain why a moratorium is not good enough any more. The Conservative government's recent reinterpretation of the moratorium has meant that Methanex and Encana have been allowed to import condensate in tankers to the port of Kitimat.

Since 2006, over 30 tankers carrying condensate have been allowed to travel through the inside passage to Kitimat, B.C. For those who do not know, condensate is a highly flammable hydrocarbon used to thin the tar-like oil extracted from the tar sands. It is classified as a dangerous good by the federal government and is so toxic that it kills marine life on contact.

Allowing oil supertankers into the Dixon Entrance, Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound would jeopardize the $1.7 billion Pacific coast fishery, the 13,000 commercial fisheries jobs, the approximate 10,000 jobs in the cruise ship and recreational tourism industry, and entire coastal cultures from the threat of oil spills.

For the record, Enbridge Inc. says its pipeline project, the northern gateway project, which will send 400,000 barrels of oil per day from Edmonton to Kitimat to be exported to Asia and the U.S. coast by tanker, will create approximately 200 long-term jobs across the entire route. To threaten tens of thousands of jobs for just 200 jobs, I do not know about my Conservative business-minded colleagues here in the House, but this makes absolutely no sense. As I have said, we need legislation to ban those tankers now.

As we have seen throughout this Parliament, New Democrats have even written the legislation and offered it up to the government to make it its own. I say to the government, if it is really interested in efficiencies, it should not reinvent the wheel, but turn Bill C-502 by my colleague from New Westminster—Coquitlam into a government bill. New Democrats would help the government pass it right away.

Canadians have repeatedly told us that as legislators we have a responsibility to future generations of Canadians to conserve our non-renewable energy resources now while developing sustainable renewable energy sources for the future.

We know the Conservative members have absolutely no commitment whatsoever to our environment, no matter what they say. Their actions, such as getting their unelected, unrepresented, undemocratic senators to kill, without debate, Bill C-311, the NDP's landmark environmental legislation, is all the proof we need of their dangerous backward thinking.

I will offer a different reason as to why the proposed northern gateway project which is dependent on a reversal of the moratorium on oil tankers is a bad idea.

Currently we produce more oil than we consume, exporting over 65% of it to the U.S., mostly as crude, unprocessed bitumen. The proposed Enbridge northern gateway pipeline would carry 525,000 barrels of crude oil daily from Alberta's tar sands to the port of Kitimat for shipment to Asia, via as many as 220 tankers each year. It would allow unprecedented tar sands expansion, some say by as much as 30%.

The pipeline would cross more than a thousand rivers and streams that make up some of the world's most productive wild salmon habitat, including the great Skeena and Fraser rivers, upon which many communities and first nations depend. The pipeline would also cross the territory of more than 50 first nations.

Here is an important fact. Current pipelines are already operating under capacity.

Instead of going west, we need a pipeline entirely located in Canada that brings oil from western Canada to the east. Instead of securing our energy supply and creating good-paying jobs in Canada, we currently have 36 pipeline projects under way or awaiting approval, none of which would send oil across Canada for Canadian consumption. In fact, for many Atlantic Canadians, Ontarians and Quebecers, Canadian-sourced oil comes to them after travelling through thousands of miles of pipelines in the United States.

This makes the need for the Enbridge northern gateway pipelines project and its associated tanker traffic highly questionable.

Further, there is already an existing pipeline and terminal in Burnaby, B.C. shipping tar sands oil to Asian markets.

Here is some food for thought. In allowing more north-south or western pipelines, we are allowing, on a daily basis, millions of barrels of crude oil to be shipped out of Canada for processing in the U.S. Now Enbridge wants to ship another half a million barrels a day of unprocessed oil to Asia for processing. Allowing tanker traffic in the Dixon Entrance, Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound would essentially expand the number of foreign companies which now control and profit from the processing of crude Canadian oil. It begs the question, why is the government not creating the value-added jobs in Canada? Why are we creating these jobs overseas? Canada needs its own capacity to process oil and create value-added jobs in Canada before exporting it.

Is the government aware that Canada is virtually alone among oil-producing countries in not having the means to supply our own needs? Ontario and Quebec in particular are completely landlocked from oil supplies. The government likes to talk about how Canada is open for business and how we need to attract foreign investment in Canada, when in fact, the effect of all these pipelines is to guarantee long-term investment in foreign countries, not in Canada. The processing facilities are in the U.S.A. and Asia, not in Canada. The processing jobs are in the U.S.A. and Asia, not in Canada. I would love answers on how this foreign investment is good for Canadians. Should we not be securing these jobs for Canadians? After all, is this not Canadian oil?

Canada needs a comprehensive energy policy, one that places emphasis on securing renewable sources of energy, one that supports the creation of homegrown green technology, which could bring thousands of high-paying jobs for Canadians and one that ensures that all future energy projects are consistent with our national interests. This is where the government's priority should lie. Instead, the Conservative government continues to rely on dirty oil while supporting foreign efforts to ship processing jobs out of Canada.

We in the New Democratic Party say no to more pipelines that ship unprocessed bitumen out of Canada, no to super oil tankers plying through sensitive marine ecosystems, no to increased reliance on oil, and yes to focusing on securing our country's energy needs through investments in clean, renewable energy. We owe it to those who elected us. We owe it to our kids and our grandkids.

I urge all members to support this motion.

Opposition Motion--West Coast Oil Tanker Traffic

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to reverse the order of the member's questions.

With respect to the two things the government could do, it could immediately look at implementing Bill C-311, the climate change accountability act, and implement the environmental bill of rights put forward by the member for Edmonton—Strathcona. Those would be two good steps in demonstrating Canada's position on climate change.

With regard to the twinning of the pipeline, I will come back to the first nations' perspective. I know we are talking about twinning here, but any additional construction is going to have an impact on territories. Before any consideration of expansion of even existing projects is considered, first nations must be at the table, must be appropriately consulted, must be included in any implementation of any decision. That is the appropriate step to take on that particular project.

Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I could give a whole speech on that, but perhaps I will concentrate on one aspect. That is Bill C-311, which was summarily defeated by the Conservative majority in the Senate.

The bill was intended to try to get Canada to commit to a strategy to deal with our environmental issues. We needed to have some hope, but that bill, after it passed here and went to the Senate, was not even debated. There was not one word of debate.

The orders came directly from the Prime Minister's office to those senators he had appointed, to say “This is what we are going to do”. I do not have to explain why, because I think Canadians know why. It is because the Prime Minister still thinks the issue of greenhouse gases is a socialist plot.

Federal Sustainable Development Act

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I note that this member voted for Bill C-311.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I hope of course that in spite of the comments of the previous speaker, this bill will pass with the unanimous support of all members.

It is very important to me that we proceed with environmental legislation in a democratic way. I urge the House to resist all efforts to judicialize environmental policy and instead to allow the members of this House, duly representing Canadians across the land, to consider the economic and social objectives of our people and to reconcile that with scientifically recommended options for the environment.

There has been some debate in the course of this morning's proceedings about the Senate, and of course this bill is about making sure that the reports under the federal sustainable development strategy are in fact delivered in the Senate. There are those in this House who would like to abolish the Senate. I myself, from time to time, have expressed the view that I am not a big fan of the Senate; however it is important for all of us, if we wish to maintain a law-abiding attitude, to recognize that the Constitution of Canada, the law of our land, does in fact establish a Senate and does give the Senate a role to play, and until the Senate is either abolished or reformed, the people who are placed in the Senate are very conscientiously trying to do the job that is assigned to them.

It is rather unfortunate that anyone would stand in this House and say that we will completely disregard the Constitution of Canada and say that senators do not have any role in our government, because of course that would be unlawful and I myself do not like to hear members of Parliament talking about proceeding in an unlawful manner.

In particular, when the Senate is faced with a terrible environmental bill such as Bill C-311, it is necessary for the senators to consider that legislation and to determine how they will dispose of it. It is completely irrelevant and in some ways irreverent and lawless to suggest that senators should not accept their responsibility to consider legislation from the House. As much as some of us would like not to have a Senate, as long as there is a Senate, senators have to be commended for conscientiously approaching their duties.

When it comes to Bill C-311, I spent hours and hours listening to evidence on that bill in committee, time that could have been spent much more productively actually talking about ways in which we can achieve environmental benefits for Canada, and in point of fact, the federal sustainable development strategy would do exactly that, whereas Bill C-311 would not have done that.

The previous speaker was somewhat disingenuous in saying that all Bill C-311 would have done was to require reporting. In fact Bill C-311 would have required unrealistic and unattainable greenhouse gas reductions. Bill C-311 itself did not propose any mechanisms or any means to achieve those reductions. In fact the evidence we heard at committee, from the Pembina Institute among others, was that the cost of reaching the goals that were set in Bill C-311 would have been about $70 billion between now and 2020. This would have been about twice the cost of the government's existing greenhouse gas program and would have only achieved a 16% difference in greenhouse gas reduction. It was a terrible bill, and whatever we think of the Senate, we can all rest a little easier tonight knowing that that bill has been deep-sixed and sent to an early grave.

Having said all of that, of course this is very partisan and I hope we will all focus on Bill S-210 and that we will all get behind it in a spirit of non-partisan attention to the concerns that really all Canadians have across the country.

National Tree Day

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to motion.

First, it was interesting that the mover of the motion said that this was not political. We are in the House of Commons. When one raises issues related to the tree, puts forward a loving, caring motion and then talks about the use of the tree in our forestry sector and its value to society, we have to look at the policies of the government related to it and whether there is true meaning behind a 17-word motion that needs to be amended. It is important that we talk about those things and not ignore them.

If this motion is to have meaning, we have to raise serious issues.

The first serious issue is it is a motion and not a bill. A bill is a different thing. A bill has considerably more weight than a motion. When in opposition, the Prime Minister used to say in the chamber that there was a moral responsibility to act when a motion in Parliament was passed. Since that time, all kinds of motions have been passed in the chamber and have never been acted upon.

One motion I worked on was the seniors' charter of rights, which eventually was in the name of the member for Hamilton Mountain. It dealt with seniors issues, such as housing, poverty and pensions. It was an important motion, yet it was not been acted upon.

Previous to that, Ed Broadbent, a respected Canadian from all party persuasions, had a motion passed to end child poverty. Sadly, nothing has been done on child poverty to get to the targets in the motion.

Recently, a motion by the member for Toronto—Danforthon the Investment Canada Act was passed. The Investment Canada Act is something we heard about recently during the potash deal and other types of unfortunate takeovers, including those in the forestry sector, in which Canadians have lost their jobs. The forestry sector is very important because we are losing our value added.

The government was part of the softwood lumber sellout. Despite winning under the dispute mechanisms of NAFTA and several lawsuits, as well as Canadians footing the bill for over $100 million in lawyer fees, we lost the $1 billion that was awarded to us out of the $5 billion, which was illegally taken from Canadian companies.

I understand the member is trying to do something nice in recognizing the tree and I appreciate that. I am the former vice-chair of the Essex Region Conservation Authority. Industrialization caused devastating effects to the environment and our ecosystems in my area. I live in a Carolinian forest area in southern Ontario, one of the few places in North America that has this diversity, and we are trying to build it back.

It is important that we talk about this. If there is to meaning, the government policies have to be solid.

I talked about the ash borer beetle in southern Ontario that came up through Michigan. The Liberal government of the day was very slow to act and did not take it seriously. By the time the firewall was built, basically by knocking other trees down, the borer beetle was already past it.

The publicity and notification campaigns were late, despite the warnings for years and years, and the beetle got out. It is in northern Ontario and other parts of Canada now. We have seen the devastating effect of that beetle. It goes underneath the skin of the elm tree, burrows and destroys the tree. We have lost thousands upon thousands of trees not only in the forests but in our cities. They have caused great economic damage, as well as critical environmental damage, not only in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.

The member noted that, but he did not want to talk about the fact that his party killed a climate change bill. Bill C-311, put forward by the member for Toronto—Danforth, the first one the world had seen, was killed by the unelected Senate. Once again, it gives meaning to the words.

Democratic Reform

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Minister of State (Democratic Reform)]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for bringing up this important issue.

We do have a situation where the Senate of Canada is not consistent with the democratic values of the 21st century. That is why we are bringing forward our legislation for eight-year term limits. This is why we are bringing in Senate elections.

What we cannot have is a Senate that has appointments made three decades ago holding up government priorities, like a strong economy, and Bill C-311 was bad for the Canadian economy.

Constitution Act, 2010 (Senate Term Limits)

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-10 and the amendment proposed by the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley today.

I would like to read the motion proposed by the member, which was:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following:

“the House decline to give second reading to Bill C-10, An Act to amend the Constitution Act, 1867 (Senate term limits), because the term limits do not go far enough in addressing the problems with the Senate of Canada, and do not lead quickly enough to the abolition of the upper chamber, as recent events have shown to be necessary.”

As I said and as was indicated by our previous speaker in regard to Bill C-10, the New Democrats had indicated that we would be supporting that bill to get it to committee, but things have changed in the last week with regard to developments at the Senate on Bill C-311, Climate Change Accountability Act.

This bill was passed not only once in this Parliament but had also passed in a previous Parliament. Of course, because of the election, it came back and had to be reintroduced and passed a second time. It then went to the Senate.

Now the unelected, appointed, Conservative-dominated Senate killed Bill C-311 without so much as giving it the proper debate and allowing it to go to a committee of the Senate and go through the proper process. Had it gone through the proper process and had they found some problem with it, perhaps they could have amended it. There were ways to deal with the bill in a proper way as opposed to the way it was treated. It was basically killed in the dead of night.

The Senate has not done something like this for many years. If this is setting a new precedent for how the Senate is going to operate, it is not very good.

Yesterday I listened to the Liberal member for Random—Burin—St. George's give the Liberal position on this bill. She was talking about the lack of consultation, as far as the provinces were concerned. I wanted to draw her attention and the attention of the House to a consultation process that occurred in my home province of Manitoba.

By the way, Manitoba did have a Senate created in 1870. Manitobans had the good sense to abolish it in 1876. Members should also know that four other provinces had senates as well. New Brunswick abolished its in 1982. Nova Scotia abolished its in 1928. Quebec created one in 1867 and abolished it in 1968. Prince Edward Island created its in 1873 and abolished it in 1893.

So we have the experience of five of our provinces that have had senates and have gotten rid of them, not to mention other examples in the Commonwealth. I fail to see any examples where jurisdictions are actually bringing forth and introducing new senates. If anything, there seems to be a move towards getting rid of them.

What happened in Manitoba on June 13, 2006, was Bill 22 passed the legislature. Bill 22, the Elections Reform Act, was approved by all parties in the legislature, including the Liberal Party. The act stated that they preferred abolishing the Senate but if the Senate could not be abolished then it should consist of democratically elected members rather than members appointed by a process involving patronage appointments.

As I had indicated, the Manitoba Senate was abolished in 1876. The feeling of the committee was that the province had been served quite well without having the Senate around.

An all-party committee was set up. Membership included the NDP, Conservatives, and a Liberal member, Mr. Kevin Lamoureux, who is currently running for the Liberals in the byelection in Winnipeg North. He may possibly be one of our colleagues in the future. Mr. Lamoureux was part of the committee that came up with final recommendations, which I will deal with in a few minutes.

This all-party committee met in Brandon, Carman, Dauphin, Flin Flon, Norway House, Russell, St. Laurent, Steinbach and Winnipeg. This has been a tradition for the last number of years in Manitoba whenever there is a controversial issue, whether it be Meech Lake, smoking in public places, or the Charlottetown accord. We have tended to get all the parties involved in an all-party committee process. We found that works quite well.

In fact, the committee heard 51 presentations at its public hearings. It had 32 written submissions sent in via mail. In fact, one of the written submissions was sent in by Senator Terry Stratton.

In terms of the people who presented at the public meetings held across the province, I will mention names that people in the House will recognize. We had the recent former MP, Inky Mark, make a presentation at the meeting in Dauphin. Also, there was Senator Sharon Carstairs, Senator Bert Brown and Daniel Boucher from the Société franco-manitobaine. As well, there was the former Conservative MP, and a chairperson for many years, Dorothy Dobbie. There was quite a substantial group of interested parties making presentations to this committee.

The question is, what did members of this all-party committee recommend after hearing from the presenters?

In the area of the term limits they were agreeable to the federal government's proposal. They did not have strong opinions one way or the other on it, but they felt the eight-year term for senators was reasonable. They had these recommendations.

Elections should be held in the province to elect nominees to the Senate to be forwarded to Ottawa.

The elections should be administered through Elections Canada with the cost being the responsibility of the federal government.

The method of voting they decided on was first-past-the-post. They looked at proportional representation and they ruled that out as that had been ruled out by several provinces in the past.

There should be regional representation among Manitoba's allotment of six Senate seats. They decided they wanted to have three in the city of Winnipeg with two in southern Manitoba and one in the north.

In addition, the current proposal of an eight-year term by the federal government is in keeping with what was heard from the presenters, as I indicated before.

What we have here is a process that was started in 2006, four years ago, involving all parties. So for the Liberal Party to suggest that somehow there has been no consultation on this issue, that it is being rammed through the House, is absolute nonsense. In Manitoba their member was part of the all-party committee. How can they say that somehow there needs to be more consultation?

It seems to me what the Liberals are interested in doing is coming up with all sorts of delay tactics to tie this idea up in knots as long as possible so another ten years will go by and things will just carry on their merry way and nothing will substantially change as a result of it.

I would suggest that the Manitoba experience seems to me to be the sort of direction upon which we should be looking to proceed in terms of consultations and involving as many people in the process as possible.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have this opportunity. It is good to have a chance to speak to Bill C-10, An Act to amend the Constitution Act, 1867 (Senate term limits). This bill actually seeks to establish a term limit of eight years for senators in Canada. That is the key part of this legislation.

What we are actually debating today is an amendment to the main motion that was moved by my colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley. The amendment motion reads:

“the House decline to give second reading to Bill C-10, An Act to amend the Constitution Act, 1867 (Senate term limits), because the term limits do not go far enough in addressing the problems with the Senate of Canada, and do not lead quickly enough to the abolition of the upper chamber, as recent events have shown to be necessary”.

It is an unusual step for us to move that kind of motion in debate on a bill like this, especially a bill that we had indicated we would support to get to committee for further discussion and for improvement. We were already saying that, even though we have very serious problems with the Senate and even though we have called for the abolition of the Senate, we were prepared to see this bill debated further and hopefully improved at committee.

The events of the past week have certainly changed our opinion about what should be done about the Senate at the present time and the government's attitude towards Canada's democracy and how this Parliament functions.

What I am referring to there is the decision by the government and by the Prime Minister to call on his senators to defeat the climate change accountability act, a private member's bill that moved all the way through the House of Commons. It was debated here in the House. It went to committee and had lengthy hearings.

It was a lengthy process on that bill by the elected representatives of the Canadian people here in the House of Commons. It passed all stages here in the House and was sent to the Senate, where it languished for months.

It was finally passed back in the spring of this year and sat in the Senate without any action until earlier this week when, out of the blue, the bill was called and defeated. It was without a hearing, without reference to a committee, nothing. There was no activity and no debate whatsoever at the Senate.

This is clearly an action by the government to defeat the only possibility of Canadian action on climate change that was in the works. This bill was something that New Democrats had put forward. It was put forward in the last Parliament.

Our earlier attempt at the climate change accountability act in the last Parliament, the 39th Parliament, was Bill C-377. After a great deal of hard work on the part of many members of the House of Commons with input from environmental leaders and other leaders from across Canada, that actually passed through the House of Commons in 2008. That was a cause for celebration among Canadians who are concerned about climate change and the environment.

That was the first time any legislature in the world had actually passed legislation that would deal with the post-Kyoto greenhouse gas reduction targets.

Canada, this Parliament, this House of Commons took an extremely important step in the last Parliament, in 2008, with the passage of the climate change accountability act. Unfortunately the election was called and interrupted that progress. It stopped the bill in its tracks, and that meant it had to start all over again when we returned after the election in 2008.

New Democrats did put it back on the agenda. Our member from Thunder Bay put that bill back on the agenda and had it debated here in the House. It went through the same long, laborious process and was again passed in May 2010.

On two occasions, the elected representatives of the Canadian people, the members of the House of Commons, have dealt with this important piece of legislation and have passed it. When it was finally sent off to the Senate, where in our process it needs to be dealt with further, going through the same kind of process, the unelected and unaccountable members of the Senate, presumably under marching orders from the Prime Minister, killed the bill without so much as a debate, without so much as a referral to committee for further study.

It is an absolutely outrageous affront to our democracy and an unconscionable use of the power of the Senate, of the unelected and unaccountable appointed Senate.

This bill, the climate change accountability act, would have established greenhouse gas reduction targets 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. It was hailed as important legislation by many respected people.

I have to point out that Mark Jaccard and Associates, an independent environmental assessment firm, did a survey of this bill. Mr. Jaccard is an important environment scientist from Simon Fraser University. Its conclusion about Bill C-311, the NDP's climate change accountability act, was that the targets it established would also encourage growing economy, increasing jobs and improving the quality of life for Canadians. It said there was a positive impact of this bill, an analysis that flies in the face of the government's blanket denunciation and rejection of the proposals in the NDP's climate change accountability act.

Unfortunately, this action has stopped. Any reasonable, effective or appropriate Canadian response to climate change was stopped dead in its tracks. It was our best opportunity and it is gone. It was done by unaccountable, unelected senators appointed by a Prime Minister who at one time did not seem to have much regard for the unelected, accountable Senate.

On a number of occasions, we have seen the Prime Minister and his Reform predecessors have had great criticism for the Senate. In December 2005, the Prime Minister said, “An appointed Senate is a relic of the 19th century”. I have to agree with the Prime Minister. It is not often that I do, but on that I certainly do. An unelected, appointed body is a relic of another era. It is an anti-democratic relic of a colonial era.

Some of the requirements to be a senator are relics of that era as well, such as the fact that senators have to be 30 years old before being appointed and that people have to own property outright in Canada before becoming a senator. Even though the threshold is now really low, the intention years ago was to make sure that senators were from the moneyed classes. They had the expectation that they would represent that class in Canada.

Today the threshold is low, but the requirement is still there. We have even seen in the past an interesting example when a nun was appointed to the Senate and, because of vows of poverty, did not have any property. Her order had to actually transfer some land into her name so she could take her seat in the Senate.

It points out the ridiculousness of that requirement. If it were a legitimate body, any Canadian of voting age, no matter what the individual's personal economic circumstances, should be able to serve in a body in the Canadian Parliament. However, not in Canada and not with the Senate. The Prime Minister was right. This unelected, unaccountable body is a relic of another era and of the 19th century.

In March 2004, the Prime Minister also said, “I will not name appointed people to the Senate. Anyone who sits in the Parliament of Canada must be elected by the people they represent”. How many times has the Prime Minister broken that promise and turned his back on that important statement of principle that came out of the convictions of the Reform Party, his predecessors? It boggles the mind the number of times he has chosen to ignore that advice.

In this corner, we are very concerned and outraged by what happened this week. It is ironic that we have this bill that would establish a term limit for senators, but that is not the issue. The issue is still that they are unelected, appointed by the Prime Minister and unaccountable to anybody. Whether they are there for 8 or 45 years, it is still an inappropriate, unelected and unaccountable body, and it should not be part of our system. It is an affront to democracy, and we need to abolish this relic of the past.

This is a very important issue. I am glad we were able to debate it this week, given that Bill C-10 was on the agenda when the inappropriate use of the Senate's power was mandated by the Prime Minister to kill the climate change accountability act. We are very lucky to have had this opportunity to draw to the attention of the House and Canadians why this body is inappropriate and why this proposed Senate reform bill does nothing to address the main problems with the Senate.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his question and comments.

I basically agree with the hon. member in that this week, the Senate breached a tacit agreement between the House of Commons and the Senate whereby the House of Commons makes a decision and the Senate takes a second look. There have been times when the Senate has made amendments that have improved bills and that is great.

However, it is not up to the Senate to make decisions on behalf of the Canadian nation or the Quebec nation. It is not representative. It is not elected. It is an archaic institution, a legacy of the colonial period. I think what happened this week with Bill C-311 is extremely serious and makes the case for abolishing the Senate. I am glad to hear that the hon. member would agree to abolishing the Senate through constitutional negotiations, which is the only way that is possible under the Canadian Constitution. The Supreme Court has reiterated that, as have the Government of Quebec and the National Assembly.

I will close by saying that, in recent months, the Senate has been extremely partisan both in terms of the bills before us and the appointments made by the Prime Minister. In fact, he had said that he would not make appointments until there was Senate reform. When there was a threat to his partisan interests, he again broke his promise and appointed senators to ensure that the Senate would be a conduit for the will of the Prime Minister's Office and the government. That is deplorable. This strengthens the case for abolishing the Senate. Once again, we will be voting against Bill C-10.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, what is really outrageous about this situation that we saw with Bill C-311 is that it was almost as if the Prime Minister had a lever in his office that he pulled and Bill C-311 dropped through the floor.

The intent of the Senate originally was as a place of sober second thought. Now we have a situation, and we have had it with previous governments, where the government in power stacks the Senate so it has control of that lever, whichever way it wants a bill or a motion to go.

This was an offence to the Parliament of this country. We have not taken Bill C-311 forward just once; we took it forward twice. It was passed twice in this House, and we still saw the Prime Minister's office pull that lever and dump that bill.

If there has ever been a case for the abolition of the Senate in this country, this is it. If we have to go to constitutional negotiations to do so, so be it. It is time to put an end to the Senate of Canada.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Yes, Mr. Speaker, I am quite aware of that. When the hon. member from the Liberal Party was giving us his speech a while ago, he was blaming the Conservatives for what happened to Bill C-311. In reality, he should be looking in the mirror and blaming the Liberals, especially the Liberal senators. All they had to do was stand up and say, “No, we are going to debate the bill”. That would have been the democratic process. Instead, they sat in their chairs and the bill was killed.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, New Brunswick, P.E.I. and Quebec abolished their senates years and years ago. In the vote we just had on Bill C-311, we heard the Liberals talk about it in the House in a very defensive way. I understand that is because it was the Liberals who called for the vote in the Senate that set this situation up. Is the member aware of this?

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on the amendment to Bill C-10, an act to amend the Constitution Act, 1867, regarding Senate term limits.

For the record, the amendment calls for striking out all of the words in the motion after the word “That” and substituting the following:

the House decline to give second reading to Bill C-10, An Act to amend the Constitution Act, 1867 (Senate term limits), because the term limits do not go far enough in addressing the problems with the Senate of Canada, and do not lead quickly enough to the abolition of the upper chamber, as recent events have shown to be necessary.

The New Democrats' position is clear. This bill falls far short on the changes necessary if the Senate is ever to be effective.

I wanted to rise during this debate because there are some important points that need to be made.

At the outset, I want to address the cynical workings of the government. It knows, as does every MP in this chamber, that the length of time that the senators stay in their appointed seats is not the real issue. The real issue is how they got to the Senate in the first place.

We know that the 35 unelected senators appointed by this Prime Minister were instrumental in killing, without debate, Bill C-311, the climate change accountability act by my colleague from Thunder Bay—Superior North.

Bill C-311 would have committed the federal government to achieving practical, science-based greenhouse gas reduction targets.

Bill C-311 was passed by a majority of the elected members of Parliament, representing the majority of Canadians.

This Prime Minister said in 2004, “I will not name appointed people to the Senate. Anyone who sits in the Parliament of Canada must be elected by the people they represent”.

For the record, let me name those unelected Conservative senators who voted to kill Bill C-311. They include David Angus, unelected, unaccountable; Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu, unelected, unaccountable; David Braley, unelected, unaccountable; Patrick Brazeau, unelected, unaccountable.

I would like to talk a little about Senator Brazeau. I would like to quote Don Martin in an article he wrote, from February 3, 2009:

It's hard to imagine how such a thoroughly damaged resumé could've survived the supposedly ruthless scrutiny of the Prime Minister's Office, particularly when the job is a 40-year guaranteed Senate gig with an annual salary of $130,000 plus perks....

The man described in his bio as a loving father of three is darn close to qualifying to be a deadbeat dad with the mother of one offspring telling CTV that Brazeau hasn't seen or properly supported his 14-year-old son in eight years.

He questions whether this is the calibre of individual the Prime Minister had in mind when he set out to reform the Senate.

The list continues with Bert Brown, unelected, unaccountable; Claude Carignan, unelected, unaccountable; Andrée Champagne, unelected, unaccountable; Ethel Cochrane, unelected, unaccountable; Gerald Comeau, unelected, unaccountable; Anne Cools, unelected, unaccountable; Consiglio Di Nino, unelected, unaccountable; Fred Dickson, unelected, unaccountable; Mike Duffy, unelected, unaccountable, and it must be pretty tough for this guy, carrying the party line instead of asking tough questions of politicians; Nicole Eaton, unelected, unaccountable; Suzanne Fortin-Duplessis, unelected, unaccountable; and Linda Frum, unelected, unaccountable.

As well, there was Irving Gerstein, and I will expand a little on this senator.

In his 2007 book on the Prime Minister's team, subtitled Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power, Tom Flanagan, a former top PM adviser, had this to say:

Under Irving Gerstein's direction, the grassroots model of fundraising has built the Conservative Party into a financial powerhouse

What is his reward? It is $130,000 plus perks, all on the taxpayers' dime. What a slap in the face to Canadians. This is the senator who is going from community to community, province to province, raising funds for the Conservative Party.

The list continues with Stephen Greene, unelected, unaccountable; Leo Housakos, unelected, unaccountable; Janis Johnson, unelected, unaccountable; Noël Kinsella, unelected, unaccountable; Vim Kochhar, unelected, unaccountable; Daniel Lang, unelected, unaccountable; Marjory LeBreton, unelected, unaccountable; Elizabeth Marshall, unelected, unaccountable; Yonah Martin, unelected, unaccountable; Michael Meighen, unelected, unaccountable; Ruth Nancy, unelected, unaccountable; Richard Neufeld, unelected, unaccountable; Kelvin Kenneth Ogilvie, unelected, unaccountable; Donald Oliver, unelected, unaccountable; Dennis Glen Patterson, unelected, unaccountable to the Canadian people; Donald Neil Plett, unelected, unaccountable; Rose-May Poirier, unelected, unaccountable; Bob Runciman, unelected, unaccountable; Hugh Segal, unelected, unaccountable; Judith Seidman, unelected, unaccountable; Gerry St. Germain, unelected, unaccountable; Carolyn Stewart Olsen, unelected, unaccountable; David Tkachuk, unelected, unaccountable; John Wallace, unelected, unaccountable; and Pamela Wallin, unelected, unaccountable.

These are all the senators who killed Bill C-311.

Let me speak a bit about another senator who was not present for the vote, Senator Doug Finley.

Bill C-311 was killed by this unaccountable Senate.

How about Michael Douglas Finley, who had to be escorted by security out of the House of Commons committee because he showed up uninvited and refused to leave, displaying such utter disrespect for this great institution?

We could spend a lot of time on all the other worthy services he delivered for the Conservative Party, but we do not have time to go there.

The Conservative committee that searches for these candidates should take a lesson from DND and advertise on the Internet for candidates, on such sites as craigslist and soft porn sites, like DND did. It may end up with better candidates to appoint to the unelected, unaccountable Senate.

I notice the growing discomfort on the faces of Conservative members as I read the names of these unelected, unaccountable and unrepresentative senators into the record of this chamber.

Is it any wonder that even in the Conservative-friendly corners criticism is mounting about the Prime Minister's unbelievable record of broken promises.

Let me quote John Ivison, who wrote in the National Post this week:

All politicians are haunted by things they’ve said in the past. All governments are buffeted by events and forced to shift position.

But how many times can a politician say something and then do the precise opposite before even his strongest supporters start to doubt him? The bond of trust between Mr. Harper and Canadians is eroding, according to opinion polls by Nik Nanos.

The list of those broken promises is long.

Can members imagine how Preston Manning must feel about the actions of the Prime Minister?

The Prime Minister is betraying all those who voted for him and the Reform Party.

He is betraying all those who thought they were getting a new form of government, one that was not as morally corrupt as the previous Liberal government.

Instead, we have a hyper-partisan, morally bankrupt, anti-democratic government that is thumbing its nose at every institution that upholds democracy.

Democracy--