Bill C-20 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) Committee on March 5th, 2008

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Madam Chair, do I have some more time? Thanks.

What I'm trying to get at is that if we're going to say that we have circumvented the requirements because we're not making a major constitutional change with regard to that...although some people would argue that there is a fundamental change. The way the Senate will be elected and the way the Senate will work is changing the fundamental characteristics of the Senate.

But I want to ask this question. The words “democracy” and “democratic” have occurred very often in the minister's speeches—on this issue, anyway—and I think we have to think of the principle of being democratic. You cannot leave out the provinces if you're going to be democratic. This is a fundamental change to the federation and to the way that institutions of Parliament are going to be able to function. We need to ask the people, and we need to ask the provinces. This may not be constitutionally needed if you want to circumvent it, but you cannot do things and change fundamental things by stealth. You have to do it in an open and democratic manner if you truly mean that. You can't do it without the provinces. The provinces should be consulted, should come onside, should decide whether they even want to go down this road. The people should decide whether they want to go down this road.

So what I am saying is that if you're going to be democratic, let's be democratic in the sense of what government can and cannot do—and should and should not do—in a democratic manner.

[The Chair, Liberal, Albina Guarnieri]

Madam Fry, do you have a quick question?

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

No, I wanted to get to the point that I was trying to make--namely, let's be democratic in how we do this. We can't leave the provinces out.

I don't know if the minister believes it would be democratic to leave out--

[The Chair, Liberal, Albina Guarnieri]

Your time has expired, but I will give the minister a chance to reply, if he chooses.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Very quickly again, this is a bill that is entirely within the exclusive jurisdiction under the Constitution of the Parliament of Canada. Just as we would on any other item of legislation.... And a province might have an interest in airports, a province might have an interest in a military base, but the reality is that those are matters of exclusively federal jurisdiction.

Certainly there's an opportunity to comment, but our real desire is to consult with the people of the provinces. That's what this bill is all about. Let's ask the people of the provinces who they want representing them. If you really believe that asking the people what they want is important, then you'll support the bill on that basis.

[The Chair, Liberal, Albina Guarnieri]

Thank you, Minister.

We'll go to Mr. Reid.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have a question, but first I want to briefly comment on the initial comments Mr. Murphy made. He made an observation that I think roughly translates as saying that we can't rely upon electorates to vote for people who aren't members of whatever the local majority population is. He gave the example of it being unlikely that New Brunswickers would vote for senators who were members of that province's francophone minority, because the province has an anglophone majority.

I just note, for the historical record, that the province did of course elect—it must be 35 or maybe 40 years ago—Louis Robichaud as premier. He of course was a member of the Acadian minority. And he actually was not a one-off in that regard, either. So this does happen.

By the same token, my colleague Mr. Lauzon, a franco-Ontarian, is in a riding that's more than half anglophone. My colleague Mr. Mark is from Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, a riding in which the majority of the population most emphatically is not Chinese-Canadian. Brian Mulroney was elected and is of course an anglophone representing a virtually homogenous francophone riding.

So there is precedent to suggest that in democracies, people will often vote for the best representative, without regard to their ethnic or other characteristics. That's just an observation.

The question I actually have is on an entirely different matter. Mr. Newman raised an interesting constitutional issue, and that is that the government currently has two pieces of Senate-related legislation before the House of Commons. One is the matter we're dealing with now, and it's ordinary legislation. One is a proposal to have eight-year terms for senators, and that is being dealt with as a section 44 amendment.

I just wonder if we could have a brief explanation as to why one path has been chosen for one of those pieces of legislation and the other path has been chosen for the other piece of legislation.

[Warren Newman]

Sometimes this is a question of legislative drafting, but I don't think that's necessarily the case here.

In some cases, it's quite clear that one must proceed by section 44 of the Constitution Act, 1982, because one is seeking to amend textually the Constitution of Canada, that is, the Constitution Act. That is certainly the case with Bill C-19. It would effect an amendment to the very text of the Constitution Act, 1867.

In this particular case, first of all, our view is that this is not a constitutional amendment in the sense in which that is understood in the amending formula. That is, it does not purport to amend a provision of the Constitution of Canada. What it does do is take the provisions of the Constitution as a given--the formal appointing process, the summoning of senators by the Governor General, and the conventional role played by the Prime Minister--and provides a mechanism or a process by which the democratic principle can play on that choice of senators. So it is not proceeding via section 44 of the Constitution Act, 1982.

Some would argue that any organic legislation is, in a sense, constitutional in a small c sense. It's all part of the common law Constitution, if you will. And there are many statutes, including the Parliament of Canada Act, that have that organic character. But this is not, as I say, a constitutional amendment the way Bill C-19 is.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you.

This is a very brief question. Again, this is for Mr. Newman.

I got the impression from your comments earlier that it's not inconceivable that one could actually deal with this in either way, that it's possible to merge items that are constitutional and non-constitutional in the same piece of legislation. Is that correct, or did I misunderstand that?

[Warren Newman]

Well, it would be possible to have a bill that, as a vehicle--and it's been done in the past--proposes an amendment to the Constitution Act, 1867, that is textually, and also provides for other provisions.

In fact, if you were to look at the Nunavut Act, you would see that it has amendments that amended the Constitution Act, 1867 by adding a senator for Nunavut and representation in the House of Commons. Those were actual textual constitutional amendments. And then it went on to provide for the Government of Nunavut in the Nunavut Act.

So you can have a bill that's a vehicle for that. But this is not what has been attempted here, and I think the government's position both on this and on the previous bills, Bill S-4 and Bill C-43, is that these are independent legislative measures. They go towards a broader view of reforming the Senate, but they stand alone, and they stand on their merits to be voted up or down accordingly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Albina Guarnieri]

Thank you, Mr. Reid.

Madame Guay.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Earlier, Tom asked about the Bloc's position. As far as the Senate is concerned, the Bloc's position has not wavered. Bloc members believe, and will continue to believe, the Senate is an outdated institution that should be abolished.

As it is, it is very difficult to work on a bill in the House of Commons. The bill goes to committee and comes back before the House. More speeches are made. The bill is then sent back to committee where a vote is taken. Finally the bill is sent to the Senate which then goes through the exact same motions. It can destroy all of the work that has already been done. It's as if our efforts are all for naught. To our way of thinking, the Senate is an outmoded institution.

I have personally done a little experiment. I asked some Quebeckers if they knew who their local senator was. No one was able to give me the name of the senator representing the Laurentides region. Senators do not make any kind of representations and they are not required to make any. They are paid quite handsomely, just as we are. However, we must work on behalf of our constituents and do our job as Members of Parliament. We are required to be in the House at least four, and sometimes five, days a week. Senators, on the other hand, come and go as they please. As far as we are concerned, the Senate is truly a pointless institution.

There are also costs associated with the Senate. Keeping senators in business is a very costly proposition. There are 100 of them and they receive hefty salaries. This money could be put to better use. Maintaining the Senate is a useless exercise, in my opinion. That's all I wanted to say.

I agree that the provinces must be consulted. You are well aware of Quebec's position. No decision can be made without consultations. You maintain that there is no need to amend the Constitution. However, I feel that we need to take a look at the Constitution, because the federal government cannot simply change everything. If the provinces are not on side, when the next election rolls around, you are going to encounter people who will not be very happy. In my view, this approach is unnecessary and counterproductive.

You yourself said in your speech that you are prepared to abolish the Senate. I don't see how we can agree on this. You said that it could take 140 years. The debate may last another 140 years, because if the topic of discussion is the Senate, we can be sure the Senate will kill any debate. And once again, we will be left spinning our wheels. I'd like to hear your views on this matter. It's not that we want to act in bad faith. It's simply a matter of where we stand, or where Quebec stands. If you were to put Quebeckers to the test, as I said, you would be surprised by their answers.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

If we were to ask Quebeckers who they would want to represent them in the Senate, that would be a consultation.

I find it hard to believe they would be unhappy to be asked that question.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

I don't think so, because Quebeckers don't want a Senate in the first place.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

As for your general comments about the role the Senate plays and whether it's valid, whether it's appropriate in this day and age, I think that's a very valid position. I can respect that position. I think it would be foolish to suggest that's a view that is not widely held by many. I think, unfortunately for the Senate and for all of us who function in this Parliament, there's an attitude of disrespect towards the Senate because it lacks legitimacy. Perhaps the only solution to that is abolition. We still think the approach of fixing it is a better approach. Canadians have been asked in opinion polls, and they're of the same view.

However, support for abolition exists and appears to be growing over time: if you went back to June 2006, abolition was at 31% in an Ipsos-Reid poll and by November of last year the support for abolition had gone up to 46%. That's almost a 50% increase—over the space of two years of this government—in the number of Canadians willing to say that abolition is an alternative they would support. No doubt it is a product of how Canadians have seen the Liberal-dominated Senate conduct itself with respect to a lot of government legislation, and in particular, I think, some of the reform proposals.

That being said, there is a much larger number of Canadians prepared to support the notion of direct elections or some kind of consultation on who they would like to see representing them in the Senate. In four different polls between December 2006 and February 2008, you see a range from 63% up to 79% saying they would support changes to the Senate of that type. There are similar numbers on the question of term limits, which is the subject of the other bill.

I take from that popular indication that the one thing there is virtually no desire for is the maintenance of the Senate as it is now. People prefer, as this government does, to see it changed and reformed, but if they can't see it changed or reformed, they seem increasingly willing to consider abolition.

[The Chair, Liberal, Albina Guarnieri]

Thank you, Minister.

We will proceed with Mr. Hill.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And thank you, Minister and colleagues, for appearing today on this important piece of legislation.

Perhaps I'll start with a few comments about some of the earlier questioning and comments made by some of my opposition colleagues. First of all, I think it was pointed out by you, Mr. Minister, that British Columbia's position is for abolition. That certainly wasn't always the case, and I want it on the record, since we're here today, that my home province of British Columbia did have legislation at one time to allow the province to conduct Senate elections. My understanding is that this has now expired.

But I can tell you, certainly in my constituency up in northern B.C., in the rural areas, there's a desire to see a reformed Senate, and I hope some day there will still be folks who are strongly supportive of a triple-E Senate, which is an elected, equal, and effective Senate. They would certainly dispute some of the comments being made, especially the ones just a few moments ago by my colleague Madame Guay from Quebec, suggesting there's no value to the Senate.

When we look at this legislation, I think we need to look to the fact that those who support reforming the Senate believe there is an inherent value in having an upper house to safeguard the less populated regions of the country, especially a large, diverse country like Canada where, if you had just a single house, you'd have situations, I'm sure, where the will of the majority would override that of the less populated regions.

That's why many people, many Canadians, as you just noted in your poll, still strongly support reforming the Senate as opposed to abolishing it. I wanted that to be on the record, Madam Chair, on our opening day of deliberations.

Following the comments of Madam Fry, the other thing I wanted to note is this whole business that if we believe in democracy, why wouldn't we believe in wider consultation with provinces and all Canadians? Certainly, being an old Reformer myself, I'm not averse to that at all; in fact, I strongly support consulting widely with Canadians on this. But I think that is a smokescreen for simply more delay.

I only need point to my service of over the past almost 15 years in this place and the past prime ministers, both Chrétien and Martin, who continually refused to move on any Senate reform by saying they wouldn't do it piecemeal, and that was their code word for doing nothing.

Quite frankly, most Canadians I talk to, certainly in western Canada, certainly in my home province of British Columbia and mostly in the rural areas of those provinces, are strongly supportive of change. They want to see the Senate changed. They want to see a government, any government, get on with it and produce some legislation that changes that place.

That's why I'm supportive of this. We all admit it's a step, but I think it's an important step. That's why I would like, in whatever time I have left, Madam Chair, to turn to the minister, to comment on this whole business about piecemeal change.

It's been my understanding in the research I've done that virtually every country that has a two-house system in place--the United States, Australia, and Germany come to mind--that's how they accomplished reforming their upper chamber: piecemeal. They made incremental changes over time. They didn't just all of a sudden decide they were going to pass this constitutional change and make it equal or make it elected. It took gradual change, it took pressure from the people to force that change, and Canada has been damn slow in getting any change.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Thank you for that, and again there's a lot that one could respond to there.

There's no doubt that a bicameral model is fairly common, that is, the two-chamber model. About 75 out of 213 countries have that model of two chambers. Increasingly what you see, though, is that almost every such second chamber in the world has a democratic element to it, whether you go with the American model of a senate that's elected on the same basis, or even in the United Kingdom now, with the House of Lords. There have been dramatic changes, incremental, piecemeal, to the composition of the House of Lords and how it operates. The mother ship has departed. Other Commonwealth countries like Australia have introduced democratic elements.

We appear to be, I guess, the one place in the world where we simply have been resistant to any kind of change or reform or democratization of our second chamber. That is a glaring embarrassment for a country that likes to pride itself on the world stage as a model democracy, that likes to send people to other parts of the world to tell them how to run a democracy, to show them how to be democratic. Yet they look at our model, and our folks are trying to explain away how an unelected, unaccountable, fully appointed body fits into a democracy.

I can tell you that if most emerging democracies chose to come up with a body like that in this day and age, we would probably quickly criticize it as a way of manifesting too much power in the hands of an unaccountable single leader or head of state. If we saw it in, say, a post-Soviet type of country or that kind of situation, we would find it very alarming and we would no doubt criticize it, yet it is exactly what we have here.

That's why I believe democratization is the best route. That being said, there are a lot of countries in the world that are functioning perfectly well with the unicameral system, with only one House, but in either event, the critical thing has to be that it is democratic. That's our core principle. That has to be the fundamental value that we go to in our parliamentary system.

All of us have visitors who come to see us here in the House of Commons, from our constituencies and elsewhere, and you take them around the building and then you try to explain the Senate, and we all have to deal with the jokes. We know that the senators themselves are fairly thin-skinned about it, because they themselves in their own hearts know that regardless of their abilities—and there are some very fine people there who have very strong abilities—they don't have legitimacy in the power that they exercise, in the powers that belong to them. Most people have the good sense to understand, to feel uncomfortable being given that kind of power, without any democratic accountability in what is a democratic country.

[The Chair, Liberal, Albina Guarnieri]

Thank you, Minister.

Mr. Martin, over to you.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you, Chair.

Mr. Minister, building off what you were saying, it's not just that the Senate is undemocratic. In recent experience it's anti-democratic in that it's been undermining and stymying the democratic will of the other side of Parliament, the House of Commons.

If I could clarify one thing in the same vein as Mr. Hill, the province of Manitoba, my home province, is listed in research as favouring abolition, and I've heard Premier Gary Doer say that as well. But by the same token, we have just recently put together a legislative committee of the provincial government to explore our options for electing our provincial senators. I don't want it to be overstated that the province of Manitoba is uncooperative in this idea of incremental reform of the Senate.

Minister, I was one of the lucky ordinary Canadians chosen in the Charlottetown accord process, when they actually put an ad in The Globe and Mail and asked...I was an ordinary Canadian once; I still am. I simply wrote a letter to The Globe and Mail, to the Government of Canada that Joe Clark had set up. What I'm getting at is that it was a consultation that was a real engagement for Canadians. There were five--six in the end--conferences across the country where they brought in ordinary Canadians, some selected the way they selected me, others from civil society, first nations groups, labour, and business. We were really seized with the issue for months and months at a time.

So I wouldn't say there's no appetite on the part of the public for a broad consultation, because in that instance the country came out. They really did. They brought their best game and they got into it.

I firmly believe that the problem with the Charlottetown accord is that we tried to take on too much at once and it collapsed under its own weight. If the Charlottetown accord had been limited to what you're putting forward in Bill C-19 and Bill C-20, I think it would have passed. We were talking about the division of power and jurisdiction, shared jurisdictions, the distribution of seats, and the way we elected senators, all at once. People's heads exploded. It just became too much, until one guy raised one feather in the province of Manitoba and said no—oh, that was Meech Lake, wasn't it? I'm mixing up my constitutional reforms here.

But if I could, in the same vein the United States gets by with two senators from Rhode Island and two senators from New York, wildly different populations. So I don't think we should agonize too much about the equal side of it at this point in time. Ours is crazy. I believe New Brunswick has ten senators, if I'm not mistaken, and Prince Edward Island has four for a population of 150,000 people. I don't know how it got so out of whack.

But the 13 failed attempts, I think, are partly because we bit off too much. So maybe with these incremental stages there is some room for optimism that we can address all those irritants that make people cry out to abolish. Maybe they can be dealt with incrementally, so that hue and cry will settle down to the point where Canadians feel this is a problem we can solve if we solve it one step at a time.

I know that's more of a comment than a question, but is there any reaction you'd like to give?

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

I'd agree with much of what you said. I was remiss in not accurately reflecting that there has been the initiative in Manitoba that you speak of, to have a committee look at how they can go about electing senators or making recommendations on who they'd have representing them in the Senate. We consider that a positive development. I don't think that's changed the government's position. They're still bringing that to the table in the committee.

But the openness and the willingness to look at it is a positive development. It's the kind of spirit I'd encourage this committee to adopt.

[The Chair, Liberal, Albina Guarnieri]

Thank you, Minister.

We will now proceed to Mr. Gourde.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I am pleased to speak today to the topic of Senate reform. I agree with some of what Ms. Guay said. People living in the different regions have no idea who their senator is. However, these senators have been appointed. The sole requirement for appointment is that they own land. Frankly, I don't know which senator represents my region of Chaudière-Appalaches.

An elected Senate would pose a threat to the institution. Senators would no longer feel any attachment for the institution as such. They would be accountable to the people who elected them. Their situation would be radically different. They would have to explain their role, actions and positions on bills put forward by the House of Commons, bills that the Senate could amend at any time.

In terms of Canadian representation, do you believe, Mr. Van Loan, that the regions would be better represented by an elected Senate? Perhaps communities that often are more concentrated in certain regions would have a better chance of being represented by a senator. I think they would. What do you think?

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

I think there are probably very few places in the country where people know who their senators are. It's the nature of the institution right now, because there is no democratic element. In fact, it's probably in the more remote regions where people are more likely to know who their senators are, because they're well-known local figures. Certainly I could walk down the streets of Toronto, I'm sure, and ask a hundred people to name me a senator who was from Toronto, and I'd have a tough time getting one person to provide me an accurate answer.

From that perspective, I think it's a reflection or manifestation of the remoteness of the institution if people don't even know who represents them in the Senate. We have here parliamentarians, people who are very actively engaged in passing laws, telling us they don't know who represents them in the Senate today. Of course, in Quebec people do represent Senate constituencies; it's different from the rest of the country. But that, I think, is a profound indication of the problem.

There are a bunch of folks in the Senate, and even the most engaged, active, interested people in the political process don't know they're there. Yet senators have more power. There are far fewer of them than there are members in the House of Commons, but the body has the same power as the House of Commons, essentially. Each senator is more powerful than any member of Parliament, yet they're not accountable.

I think the connection to the people of the province, the level of representation, the familiarity, the likelihood that individuals will be sensitive to the concerns of the area they represent, all of those will be enhanced and increased if you have a system in place, as we are suggesting under Bill C-19, where people are actually asked who they want to have representing them in the Senate.

[The Chair, Liberal, Albina Guarnieri]

Thank you, Minister.

Madam Folco, you have the floor.