Paul Calandra

[Ethics, October 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, again, Nigel Wright has accepted full responsibility on this matter. We have answered all of the questions that have been posed to us to the best of our ability.

What this underlines, though, is that Canadians want accountability in the Senate. That is why we have put on the table a number of reforms, which include Senate elections and term limits for senators. We hope the NDP and the Liberals will join us in bringing that accountability to the Senate.

[Ethics, October 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, what is clear is that we are continuing to work with authorities to get to the bottom of this.

Mr. Wright has accepted sole responsibility for his actions on this. We will continue to answer all the questions to the best of our ability and will work with authorities on this.

[Ethics, October 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, this question shows that we must continue to work with the authorities. We have answered all the questions on this subject based on the information that we had. Meanwhile, we have continued to work on real Senate reform.

We have put forward a number of proposals to reform the Senate. That is why we are continuing to move those forward, including an elected Senate with term limits, unlike the opposition, which brought forward a silly motion today to apparently end partisanship in the Senate.

There is a lot of things that are confronting this government and the Canadian people, and we will get the job done for them.

[Ethics, October 22nd, 2013]

It is certainly nice to be loved, Mr. Speaker.

The Prime Minister has answered these questions very clearly on a number of occasions with all of the information that he had available to him. We are continuing to work closely with authorities on this and we are providing them any information that they require.

In the meantime, there are a lot of issues facing Canada and we are going to continue to move forward with jobs and economic growth for such things as the Canada-European Union free trade agreement, which brings lots of jobs and opportunity across this country.

[Ethics, October 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, very exciting—

[Business of Supply, October 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the people who are responsible for the current Senate scandals are the people who were entrusted by the people of Canada to represent them in the Senate and then took actions that were an offence, not only to the rules of the Senate but to the Canadians who have sent us here to represent them. This is something that these four senators need to account for. That is what is happening right now with respect to accountability in the Senate.

In the member's own question, she flip-flopped twice. The NDP's position is to abolish the Senate, but not necessarily abolish the Senate. They would reform it first, spend House time talking about reforming the Senate and debate the member for Outremont's bill, which would actually give the Senate more power. However, at some point in time, they would come back to the debate and talk about abolishing the Senate.

The New Democrats are all over the map on this. It really shows how amateur and immature they are. I guess that comes with losing 16 straight elections. The New Democrats are at the point right now where they will try anything to get from that side of the House to this side, no matter how stupid they look. No matter how ridiculous they look, they will put anything on the table. They do not care about the consequences of bringing forward motions like this and wasting taxpayers' time.

We have issues with respect to criminal justice that need to be addressed. We have issues with respect to Canadian-European free trade that need to be addressed. We have sectors within that trade agreement that want to talk more about the agreement. What does NDP bring forward? The most important thing to the NDP right now is to try to remove partisanship from the Senate. They are trying to remove partisanship from the Senate. It is unbelievable. New Democrats should really get thinking.

There are a lot of Canadians in the galleries watching this. I know the last thing they are probably thinking about is how we can remove partisanship from the Senate. What are Canadians talking about? They are talking about how they can keep their jobs, how they can keep their taxes low and how they can keep their communities safe. The last thing they are thinking about is that they have to remove partisanship from the Senate. It is of vital national interest. Let us stop all debate on everything else, and let us get to removing partisanship from the Senate.

The only people who think that is important are the New Democrats. That is why, for 16 straight elections, they have been sitting on that side of the House.

[Business of Supply, October 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, you know how much I value your opinion and how important I think the rules of the House are. I will abide by your decision and make sure I stick to the substance of the motion we are talking to today.

I do agree with the hon. member in that I do have a lot of respect for the member opposite who has brought this motion forward. He has been asked to do something by his party that he probably would not do if he were still practising law and representing a client. He has been asked to do something pretty quickly to try to score some partisan political points in a debate with respect to Senate reform. This is ironic in a sense, because in the motion the members say they want to remove partisanship from the Senate by bringing forward an incredibly partisan bill at a time when we should be working together to elevate people's respect for the prestige of the institutions that support this country.

We will continue to work for amendments or improvements in the Senate because that is what I think Canadians are asking us to do, and we will work with both opposition parties, if that is something that can happen. However, we have been waiting since 2006 to bring some very meaningful reform to the Senate and have been very frustrated by the lack of support we have been given from the opposition.

[Business of Supply, October 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, let me say how crushed I am that the press gallery is not supportive of me and that its members are somehow upset at the way I answer questions in the House of Commons. I will do better to make the press gallery happy with me. I am just happy that those people do not live in my riding and that the press gallery will not be passing judgment on me in the next election.

The reality is that the Prime Minister, with respect to the circumstances that have happened in the Senate, has answered all the questions that have been put forward to him with the information that he had available to him at the time. I have an email here from a constituent of mine, Carole. She is a senior, and she emailed me yesterday and said, if she wanted to watch Matlock, she would turn the TV on and watch repeats of Matlock. She said it is time for us to get back to doing what we are supposed to be doing and working on constituents' behalf.

I called her and asked her about that. She said to let the police do their job; let the authorities who are investigating the senators do their job. If there are charges that need to be brought forward, they will bring those charges forward. She said we should concentrate on jobs, growth and economic activity, and that is what we are going to continue to do.

[Business of Supply, October 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to get up in the House of Commons to speak to the issues people elected us to speak to.

I am particularly happy to be up today to talk about this. It is an opportunity for us to not only to highlight some of the inconsistencies in the NDP messaging on this but to highlight the significant reforms we have put on the table with respect to the Senate to try to move it into the 21st century and make it an institution accountable to Canadians that Canadians can again be proud of.

One of the most important things any of us can do as parliamentarians is make sure that Canadians have pride not only in their country but in the institutions that serve their country and make it such a great place to live.

I will quote the motion. I do not want to get it wrong. The NDP motion says:

...urgent steps must be taken to improve accountability in the Senate...

If this is so important, I have to ask myself why the NDP, since we have been elected, has chosen not to support any of the reforms we have put on the table with respect to the Senate.

We have been in office eight years, but the vast majority of that time was spent in a minority government, when we needed the support of one or both opposition parties to move legislation through this House and into the Senate. Quite often, that was not the case when it came to the Senate.

We put in place a number of significant proposals that Canadians have long been asking for. We have been consistently frustrated, in part because the NDP for so long has maintained one position. That position is that the Senate needs to be abolished. However, today the NDP members have changed their minds yet again and now have moved to say that the Senate actually needs to be reformed.

There are some of the inconsistencies. The member for Outremont, the leader of the NDP, has also brought a bill forward in this House that would actually give the Senate even more powers. In the span of a short period of time, we have seen the NDP move, with respect to Senate reform, in all kinds of different directions. It is very confusing, and it is very hard to understand what the NDP actually wants with respect to Senate reform.

One of the discussions we have been having is with respect to non-partisanship in the Senate, which I think was brought up by the former leader of the Liberal Party and the former Bloc member, now an independent member. This is very difficult to understand. The only way one could actually guarantee that a senator would be non-partisan would be to strip the right of that senator to vote in an election. Every senator has the right to vote in an election. By their nature, they are going to be making decisions, whether we strip them of their rights to come to a caucus meeting or not. I hope that the NDP is not suggesting that we need to strip senators of their right to vote in elections to ensure that they remain non-partisan.

I think this reflects the immature nature of the NDP approach to this, or as was said earlier by a Liberal member, the amateurish nature of this motion. It is another attempt to waste time in Parliament. The reason it is wasting time in Parliament is that we have so many serious things we should be talking about right now. That is not to minimize the events that have occurred in the Senate over the last number of months.

Canadians have expressed that they are very disappointed in what they have seen in the Senate, as they should be, and not just recently but for a long period of time. It is the lack of accountability in the Senate. It is the lack of transparency in senators' spending, our inability to extract accountability from our Senate colleagues, and Canadians' inability to extract accountability because senators are not elected and there are very few opportunities for them to be removed.

We have also seen in the recent past the sad spectacle of one senator who was being tried with respect to spending infractions and was being paid the entire time it took to get this case through court. He was subsequently found guilty and sent to jail, but throughout that period he was still receiving a paycheque from the people of Canada, despite the fact that he was unable to attend the Senate or perform any of the functions that we would expect of our senators.

Since being elected, the Conservatives have put on the table very meaningful reforms with respect to the Senate because we understand the status quo is not an option for a country as great as Canada in the 21st century. It is not an option for a country that will be seizing on extraordinary opportunities, a country that will be leading in economic growth, a country that will be leading in so many different areas that are important, not only to Canadians but to people around the world. We are a country that will do its part in making sure that Canadian values are protected, not only at home but abroad. To do that we also need to move forward and make some changes to the Senate.

When we look at the Senate, we have two options. We could abolish the Senate and go through the process that is required to abolish the Senate, seeking the approval of the provinces to do so, or we could try to work within the constitution and reform the Senate. That is what we have brought forward. We brought forward some very positive proposals that would see us working with our provincial partners in order to have a more accountable Senate.

One of these initiatives is the selection of senators. Right now, senators are called by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister and they serve up to 45 years. In many instances, that happens without the consultation of the provinces. Within the current constitutional framework, we asked how we could reform the Senate so that we work with our provincial partners and we do not open the constitution, distracting Canadians from the real job that we need to do during this time of global economic downturn. We want to continue to focus on creating jobs and opportunities but at the same time try to reform some of these institutions that Canadians are asking us to bring into the 21st century.

In the Alberta model, Albertans elect senators. It has already been talked about by a number of my colleagues that a number of senators from Alberta have been elected. There are elected senators serving right now from Alberta. Alberta has a selection process where the people of Alberta are consulted, an election takes place and that list is provided to the Prime Minister who then selects from the list of elected senators to fill vacancies for the province of Alberta in the Senate.

The member for Durham quite eloquently talked about Stan Waters, the first elected senator. There was a lot of hope back then when former prime minister Mulroney appointed the first elected senator to the Senate, following this election or selection process. Unfortunately that stopped with the election of the Chrétien Liberals. The Liberals had a different approach to the Senate. They also had their own challenges to face. They had a different approach. In some areas they are protective of the status quo.

We came to power in 2006 with a different agenda. We consulted Canadians, and Canadians asked us to move forward with the selection process. We want to work with our provincial partners to see if this process, the Alberta model, could be brought in throughout Canada, thereby taking it out of the hands of the Prime Minister and putting it back in the hands of the Canadian people, making the Senate more accountable.

At the same time, in order to be truly accountable, to have the type of diversity that we need in the Senate and to have that sober second thought, which is a term that a lot of people use, we thought we would also bring in term limits for our senators. The proposal that we brought forward has a nine-year term. Canadian people would have the opportunity to select their senators, they would serve for one full term of nine years, and then there would be another selection process.

What this did not do was force this system upon the provinces. In order to do that we would have to reopen the Constitution. We would have to have a large, long, protracted negotiation with the provinces. A lot of provinces have different feelings with respect to what should actually happen in the Senate. However, this was a co-operative way of bringing about meaningful reform in the Senate.

Having brought that forward when we were first elected in a minority government and trying to proceed along, seeking these reforms, we were quite often frustrated in the process by the opposition parties. Obviously, as members know, in order for a government in a minority situation to pass legislation, it needs the support of other opposition parties.

At the same time, of course, we were dealing with very difficult circumstances in terms of the global economy. There were a number of things we were trying to focus on, not only as a government but as parliamentarians together. There were two elections at that time, and the good people of Canada decided that we deserved a majority government. In the time since then, we have continued to move forward with meaningful Senate reform. It is something that is not only important to us but it is important to Canadians.

Just to go back to some of the rationale for what we are putting on the table as proposals with respect to the Senate, one of the things that we know we can do as parliamentarians without seeking constitutional amendments is making changes to how our systems work here. We can do that. Section 44 of the Constitution Act, 1982, grants Parliament alone the power to “make laws amending the Constitution of Canada in relation to the executive government of Canada or the Senate and House of Commons.”

That is important. It is obviously a very important section because that gives us, the House of Commons and the Senate together, the opportunity to make changes to how we operate, to make changes within our rules without having to seek the approval or the constitutional amendments that, as we know, have not always been successful in the past. They sometimes even divert government's attention away from what Canadians are asking us to do, especially right now in a time of global uncertainty, which is to focus on jobs and economic growth.

That is a responsibility that we have through the Constitution, to make changes right here. Having said that, we also know that some of the reforms we have put on the table are not universally accepted by either members of the opposition or some of the provinces. As I said earlier, some of the provinces have differences of opinion on what we should do with the Senate and how the Senate should be reformed. Individual members of Parliament, individual senators, all have a lot of different ideas.

That is one of the reasons we referred a series of questions to the Supreme Court of Canada. It was so that we could have a proper road map of what we could do, and how we could move forward with Senate reform in a way that is co-operative, in a way that does not open up the old constitutional battles of the past, and in a way that will not see the House being diverted from the main goals, which are to continue growing the economy, to continue tackling crime in our communities, to work with the provinces to expand and make our health care system better, to tackle the very urgent needs with respect to infrastructure, to do better things to build on the success of our Canadian Armed Forces over the last number of years and to provide them the appropriate equipment.

There is a lot of work that we need to do at the same time as we look at reforming the institutions of the House of Commons and the Senate. However, one thing that is very clear is that we need to move in the direction of reform. The status quo is no longer acceptable to anyone.

I guess the circumstances or the activities of some senators over the last number of months have really highlighted for Canadians why it is so important that we reform the Senate. It has highlighted for Canadians why, since 2006, we have been so focused on trying to move forward this reform agenda with respect to the Senate. I am now happy that I am hearing from the opposition, or at least from some of the opposition, that we need to move away from the status quo and make some changes to the Senate to expand accountability in the Senate and make it a more responsible institution for the 21st century.

I think all of us in the House would agree that what we have seen over the last little while, with respect to the Senate, is not something that reflects poorly just on the Senate. It is something that reflects poorly on all of us as elected officials, as people who serve Canadians. When we are given the awesome responsibility of serving people, whether it is through election or through an appointment to the Senate, we are given that responsibility by the Canadian taxpayers, who pay us a lot of money to do the jobs that we do. They entrust us with a lot of money in order to do those jobs. They expect that we would use those funds appropriately and that we would understand how hard they have worked in order to provide us with the resources we need to get our job done.

What we have seen lately in the Senate is an embarrassment not just to government, it is an embarrassment to all members of Parliament and it is an embarrassment to all senators. We have to get to the bottom of this. We have to work as best as we can as parliamentarians to reform that institution. If we cannot reform the Senate, I think we have to move forward, working with our provincial partners, and like all of the provinces have done, abolish the Senate. At this point, it just is quite clear to us that Canadians have lost faith and trust in the Senate as an institution the way it is right now, so we are going to move forward with that reform agenda.

However, at the same time, we can in no way support a motion such as this, because as was very eloquently said by the former leader of the Liberal Party, this is a very amateur motion. It is void of any substance whatsoever. If we are to make real, meaningful changes with respect to an institution such as the Senate or the House of Commons, we have to do it properly and not in the spirit in which this was brought forward.

[Intergovernmental Relations, October 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, this is a matter that is before the courts, but obviously we know that no one wants another referendum.