Mr. Speaker, I am glad to see that you are not caught in a strait-jacket. That would be unfortunate.
It will be difficult to top the bombastic statements we just endured from the other side. Maybe I am capable of it. We will see as the debate goes on.
I want to talk about the other place somewhat. The issue today is a good one. I saw it starting today in a press conference. Today was the day the Senate was asked to appear before the House some time before the end of this sitting day to explain itself, to account for the money it is spending.
On May 9 the member for Comox-Alberni, when on the Standing Committee on Government Operations, sent a letter asking the Senate for an accounting of how it was spending its money. It was not an absurd request. It is a public body and has a $40 million budget. It is spending taxpayers' dollars and we think we should be entitled to see how it is spent.
The Senate says it is not going to respond to the letter. Not only that, it is not going to respond to any demands by the House of Commons. It answers to no one, which is not entirely true. It does
answer to someone and it does dance to a tune, but it dances to the party tune of the Liberal Party of Canada.
I was in the House when the Prime Minister stood and said: "I will appoint people to the Senate and the people I appoint will be good Liberals who will do as they are told". The senators answer to no one publicly. They answer behind the scenes to the man who sits over at that desk, and that is a shame.
There are people in Canada, especially in the west-I will not speak for all of Canada; I do not claim to have omniscience. People in most parts of Canada have said for a long time that we need some Senate reform and if there is going to be a Senate, it should be accountable. It should be through election so that if the senators are not doing their jobs of representing their home provinces or regions, they can be yanked out of office. As Mr. Manning Senior, the former senator, said in times past: "It is a place of protocol, Geritol and alcohol". Is that true? I hope not, but if it were, the senators should be accountable. They should be accountable. They should be able to be pulled back through an election but that cannot happen.
Senators should have some job to do. Does anybody really know what the job of the Senate is? We in this place know that the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod traipses in here once in a while. He hammers on the door and we traipse there, they traipse here, but does anybody really know what they do?
I suppose senators do some effective work but we cannot know because we cannot look at the budget. They will not explain where they spend their money. They will not tell us. They just send us the bill and we just sign the cheque. That is unacceptable.
This is not just a Reform Party issue. In 1926 there was a study published entitled "The Unreformed Senate of Canada", by Robert MacKay. I do not think anybody here was involved in writing this. Here is what was said some 70 years ago:
The House of Lords still represents an important class in the community; the American Senate, even before it was elected directly by the people of the various states, represented the states-the Canadian Senate as a House of Parliament represents nothing. The Senate-is a bribery fund in the hands of the Government, and paddock for the `Old Wheel Horse' of the Party, nor on its present footing, can it ever be anything else-
Probably on no other public question in Canada has there been such unanimity of opinion as on that of the necessity for Senate reform.
People were saying that 70 years ago. Maybe some people define Canadianism as not being American.
The other common thread we seem to be hearing often on the Senate in answer to the question "do you respect the Senate" is that they do not. This answer comes from all Canadians whether they are from Quebec-the members sitting here-from the west or from Atlantic Canada. The reason is the Senate does not give them a chance to respect it.
As we are talking about the estimates tonight, the Senate will not account for the money it is spending. We are coming up to an election year. It is possible that an election will be held in the spring of 1997, the fall of 1997, who knows? As we gear up toward that election, what is the Senate spending its money on? I have some suspicions.
I see prominent members of the Senate appointed to prominent positions on the Liberal campaign team. They seem to be chief fundraisers, chief message boys, chief organizers, chief election readiness people. I saw a similar thing happen. I was an observer at the PC convention-I do not want to pick only on Liberals-but their chief organizers were from the Senate. Why? Because the taxpayer pays the bills.
Senators travel the country, they do not have to account to anybody, they do not have to show up, they do not have to sit on a committee. They do not have to do anything. All they have to do is answer to the person in the chair over there, the leader of the government. That is all they have to answer to.
There are limits on spending for political parties. There are limits on how much we can raise and spend on advertising, all that kind of stuff, but there are no limits on what is being spent indirectly through the Senate. That is unfortunate and there seems to be no thirst or willingness on the part of the government-and there is complicity in this, of course-to force the Senate to come forward.
We do not have to give these people the money. We could force them to come forward. Maybe they are spending it wisely. I have my doubts but at least we could come forward and debate that if we could see it but we cannot see it.
I have a quote from the auditor general in 1991. He said: "Frequently senators and senior management do not know whether operations are achieving their intended purposes or are being carried out in an economical and efficient manner". This is from our auditor general, a neutral person, who says that they do not even know in the Senate whether they are spending their money wisely or efficiently. All of this would be a moot point-maybe I am a snarky Reformer with a bad attitude-if that were true.
In 1990 the Prime Minister said: "The Liberal government in two years will make the Senate elected". That promise is gone. In 1991 the Prime Minister said it again. It is in Hansard. What has he done so far? He has appointed 14 people to the Senate. The headlines in the paper read: "Chrétien Senate plums make Mulroney look like a piker" and "The PM's sad slide on the Senate".
The Senate should be elected. More than that, it should be accountable. It should have to account for the money it spends. I should have to out of my member's budget; this House should have to; the Speaker in the Chair should have to; all of us should have to account for public funds. The fact that the Senate will not account for it and will not report back is an indictment in and of itself.
It is an unfortunate development. I wish the senators had listened to the committee and I wish we did not have to have this debate. Unfortunately somebody has to call the Senate on the carpet. If the Reform Party is the one to do it, I am happy to raise the issue.