Bill C-43 (Historical)

Senate Appointment Consultations Act

An Act to provide for consultations with electors on their preferences for appointments to the Senate

This enactment provides for the consultation of electors in a province with respect to their preferences for the appointment of Senators to represent the province.
Part 1 provides for the administration of a consultation, which is exercised under the general direction and supervision of the Chief Electoral Officer.
Part 2 provides for the holding of a consultation, initiated by an order of the Governor in Council.
Part 3 provides for a process whereby prospective nominees may confirm their nominations with the Chief Electoral Officer.
Part 4 addresses voting by electors in a consultation.
Part 5 sets out the rules for the counting of votes pursuant to a preferential system, which takes into account the first and subsequent preferences of electors as indicated on their ballots.
Parts 6 and 7 deal with communications and third party advertising in relation to consultations.
Part 8 addresses financial administration by nominees.
Part 9 provides for the enforcement of the enactment, including the establishment of offences and punishments for contraventions of certain provisions.
Part 10 contains transitional provisions, consequential amendments to the Canada Elections Act and the Income Tax Act, coordinating amendments and commencement provisions.

Senate Appointment Consultations Act

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

moved that Bill C-43, An Act to provide for consultations with electors on their preferences for appointments to the Senate, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to open the debate on Bill C-43, the Senate Appointment Consultations Act, which is important legislation to make Canada's democratic institutions better. It also represents another step in the positive reform of the Senate undertaken by this government.

This bill follows through on the promise made to the people of Canada in the Speech from the Throne to “explore means to ensure that the Senate better reflects both the democratic values of Canadians and the needs of Canada's regions”. More importantly, this bill strengthens the pillars of our proud Canadian democracy. Bill C-43 not only strengthens but also revitalizes and modernizes some of our traditional Canadian values. What I am talking about, of course, is what Prime Minister John George Diefenbaker called the “legacy of freedom” cherished by all Canadians.

In 1960, Prime Minister Diefenbaker's definition of Canadian values included the right to “be free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, and free to choose those who shall govern my country”.

The right to choose who will govern our country or the right to vote is perhaps our most precious and fundamental right, something that has been in our thoughts this week as we mark the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

We on this side of the House are proud and honoured to be part of a Conservative parliamentary tradition of expanding rights to Canadians, including particularly the right to vote.

It was Sir Robert Borden's wartime government that first extended the right to vote to women who had close relatives in the armed forces through the Military Voters Act of 1917.

At the dawn of 1919 all women were enfranchised with the enactment of the Act to Confer Electoral Franchise Upon Women, again by Borden's Conservative government.

Likewise, in 1960 Prime Minister Diefenbaker put an end to what he rightly considered an unfair law that forced native people to choose between their right to vote and their treaty rights. Giving aboriginal people the right that was granted to them at Confederation was an ideal to which Prime Minister Diefenbaker had long been dedicated. He noted this in his memoirs:

I felt it was so unjust that they didn't have the vote.I brought it about as soon as I could after becoming prime minister.

Diefenbaker's government granted status Indians the right to vote, without having to give up their treaty rights on March 10, 1960, thus eliminating once and for all voting rights restrictions based on race or religion in Canada.

Our government is following the course charted by our predecessors in Parliament and strengthening the voice of the Canadian people in the Senate, one of our most valuable institutions. We had told Canadians that our government would be mobilizing and democratizing the Senate so that they could have a say in the appointment of their senators. It is time that all Canadians be allowed to exercise the most fundamental right in any democracy, namely the right to vote, in the selection of those who will represent them as senators.

As soon as it took office, our government undertook, as promised, a process to strengthen democracy.

The first legislation passed in this Parliament was the government Bill C-4 that created a review of party registration rules, and just before Christmas, we finally secured passage of the Federal Accountability Act. From a democratic reform perspective, the act reduced the influence of big money in election campaigns and imposed new donation limits and disclosure requirements on those who seek public office.

We have, again with the support of our colleagues in the opposition, passed legislation in the Commons to establish fixed dates for general elections, that is, every four years in October.

Just like the bill we are discussing today, Bill C-16 represents a meaningful improvement to the democratic landscape without requiring a constitutional amendment. Ironically, the Liberal Senate has blocked it from becoming law by amending it at the last minute. We will be asking the Senate to remove that inappropriate amendment so that fixed dates for elections can become law.

Bill C-31 will enhance the integrity of the electoral process. It is currently awaiting approval in the Senate and we would like to see it passed as soon as possible, so that it can be put in place for the next general election.

As we know, citizen involvement is fundamental to any democratic institution. Unfortunately, Canadians have had no involvement in the selection of their senators.

There is one exception. In 1990, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney appointed Stan Waters to the Senate after he was selected in a Senate election sponsored by the province of Alberta.

This week, the Prime Minister told us another exception is coming, with his intent to appoint Bert Brown to the Senate, also chosen by Albertans in a vote to represent them.

These are the harbingers of change and the democratization that will be made a permanent fixture in our Canadian democracy, allowing Canadians a say in who will represent them in the Senate, strengthening our Canadian democracy.

Bill C-43 moves to make this happen by immediately involving Canadians in the process.

This bill will enable the government to consult Canadians about the people who will be representing them in the Senate. It is also an important step in the evolution and modernization of a great Canadian institution.

Furthermore, this bill recognizes that citizens—not political friends or big donors—are in the best position to advise the Prime Minister about the people who should speak on their behalf in their institutions. We know that Canadians think it is time to act on this idea.

Bill C-43 will do more than enable Canadians to have their say about the representatives who will be making decisions on their behalf here in Ottawa. It also guarantees that those representatives will be accountable for the decisions they make.

Consulting the Canadian public on Senate appointments will help to boost the Senate's legitimacy in the eyes of Canadians by transforming it into a more modern, more democratic, and more accountable institution that reflects the core values of Canadians.

Senate reform has been something of a national preoccupation for more than a century now, consuming a great deal of time, energy, effort and attention, almost since Confederation in fact.

Well-meaning and reasonable proposals to improve the Senate have sadly become bound up in the broader national pursuit of omnibus constitutional reform, and those efforts to modernize the Senate came to naught.

Ultimately, of course, we know that fundamental reform of the Senate will require complex, lengthy and multilateral constitutional change. There does not exist, sadly, at present, the national consensus or will required to engage in the inevitably long and potentially contentious rounds of negotiations that would be involved.

Some people say that it would be best to do nothing. They just want to shrug their shoulders and say they cannot do what must be done. That is exactly what the Leader of the Opposition did this week. Others prefer to close their eyes and wait until some other time when all of the issues concerning the Senate can be resolved at once.

That is not what the government thinks, nor is it what Canadians think. We believe that Canadians expect more from their national institutions and their government. In fact, that is what they have told us. They know that some Senate reforms are within our grasp, and they want us to act.

There are, of course, other elements of a reformed Senate that will have to wait for another day, most notably redressing the inequalities of provincial representation. However, our step-wise approach will lay the groundwork for a strong foundation for any future change.

I am pleased to note that during the consultations of the Special Senate Committee on Senate Reform last fall, leading constitutional scholars agreed with the government's interpretation that the approach taken in Bill C-43 is legally valid without a constitutional amendment.

Speaking of that Senate special committee, I would like to use the example of another piece of legislation, Bill S-4, as clear evidence that Canadians need and deserve an upper chamber that is more democratic and more accountable to them.

Bill S-4 is legislation that proposes to limit Senate terms to eight years. Bill S-4 was introduced in the Liberal dominated Senate for consideration on May 30, 2006.

Last spring the upper chamber struck a Special Senate Committee on Senate Reform to examine the subject matter of Bill S-4. The committee held exhaustive hearings with witnesses, including the Prime Minister, ministers from several provinces and constitutional experts. In October of last year it reported its findings, which supported the government's approach.

Let me emphasize the point that the special Senate committee with its Liberal Party majority, in its report, endorsed the government's incremental approach to Senate reform. It went so far as to pronounce itself hopeful that the government would continue the momentum of reform it began with Bill S-4.

Paradoxically, however, Liberal members of the Senate brought the momentum of reform, so admired by the committee, to a screeching tortuous halt. Bill S-4 is now the subject of a second round of hearings by a Senate standing committee, a committee that is essentially duplicating the efforts of the special committee.

Despite the endorsement of the special Senate committee, Bill S-4 languishes in the upper chamber still, an astounding 325 days after its introduction.

This is all the more remarkable when one considers that the Liberal Party leader says he supports term limits for senators. He even bravely declared months ago that he would get the Liberal senators to finally deal with the bill. According to the Canadian Press, Dion's decision “Breaks an impasse in the Senate”. Despite his bold declarations, he could not get it done. More Liberal senators continue to obstruct and delay the Senate term limits bill.

A national institution that is truly accountable to the people would not engage in this political muscle flexing for almost a full year so far. An institution that is truly responsive to the people it purports to serve would not employ these recalcitrant procedural manoeuvres for the sole purpose of frustrating the government's agenda, an agenda endorsed by Canadians.

I would like to take this opportunity to once again implore members of the official opposition to urge their colleagues in the Senate to stop playing games, stop resisting constructive change, and get on with the job that Canadians expect and want them to do.

The government rejects the tactics employed by some senators and is taking action to respond to the wishes of Canadians on the subject of Senate reform.

In conclusion, Bill C-43, the Senate appointment consultations act, will strengthen and revitalize the very values that define us as Canadians, values such as democracy and accountability in government.

Indeed, it extends to Canadians the most fundamental right of all, the right to vote, by advancing the principle that Canadians should have a say in who speaks for them in the Senate.

The government believes Canadians should have that right. Bill C-43 not only allows Canadians to indicate who they would like to represent them, it ensures that the people they select are required to account for their actions. In fact, the bill proposes rigorous standards of accountability for nominees, similar to the ones Parliament has put in place for the Commons through the Federal Accountability Act's amendments to the Canada Elections Act.

Bill C-43 is a realistic and achievable Senate modernization measure. It will not have to go through official constitutional amendment procedures. This is not a bill to amend the Constitution, and there is nothing in it that requires a constitutional revision. That is the government's position.

Rather, this is an important step that is part of a gradual approach. The ultimate goal is to bring the Senate into line with the democratic values of Canadians. We need to strengthen democracy. The act to provide for consultations concerning Senate appointments lays the foundation for future changes that will transform Canada's Senate from a 19th century institution into one fit for the 21st century.

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, may I first perhaps help the government House leader out of a mistake that he made? I am sure it was unintentional. I know he would not have intentionally mentioned the leader of the official opposition by name, so he must have been referring to Céline Dion, one of the world's best performers, when he mentioned that name, and Canadians are all very proud to be citizens of the same country.

The government House leader mentioned Bill C-16, the fixed election date bill, as an example of the government's intention to further democratize government institutions of this country, but I note something strange about that. Just before the break three weeks ago, Bill C-16 came back from the Senate with a very minor procedural amendment. It was not significant at all. It was completely in line with the other provisions of that statute, which would have provided some flexibility to avoid election dates and conflicts between municipal or provincial and federal elections by having some discretion in the Chief Electoral Officer.

It was a very minor change. If the government was truly sincere in its wish to see fixed election dates moved quickly ahead, the opposition offered the option to fast track it, to get it through and have royal assent that very evening before the House of Commons broke for its recess. Strangely, that was refused. It was refused not because it was a substantial amendment, but because, one is compelled to suspect, the government did not want a fixed election date provision that would allow for a dissolution only on a non-confidence vote before the four year term came up.

If the government had agreed with that passage, it would have removed the ability the Prime Minister now has to do what he was critical of past prime ministers doing in the past, and prime ministers of both ruling parties, by the way, and that is to seek dissolution without a non-confidence situation. If the Prime Minister wanted to keep his options open for having a quick election, which he said he did not want to do, he was keeping his options open by that stall.

It is still stalled, which is extraordinary. It does not speak well of the Prime Minister's intentions and credibility when he says he wants fixed terms and he does not want prime ministers to fool around with a dissolution without a non-confidence vote, but then refuses quick passage.

Let me put this to the government House leader. Why will the government not accept this offer to fast track the bill now, get royal assent, get on with it, and check off a piece of democratic reform that many of us in the House think is long overdue and which the official opposition supports? Why will he and his government not take advantage of this opportunity to fast track that provision of democratic reform?

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

Mr. Speaker, my friend raises two very important questions.

On the first point I will have to acknowledge that he is indeed correct in that this government has very few problems with the involvement that Céline Dion has had so far in our Senate term limits bill. Whatever her multitude of talents, I do not believe she is responsible for the obstruction that has occurred in the Senate or for the inability to persuade Liberal senators to follow the lead of their leader and get them to fast track that bill. Actually, “fast track” is a silly concept because it has been there for 325 days. Instead, I should say “actually deal with the bill”.

Thus, the member is absolutely correct. It is the Liberal leader who is responsible for that failure to get his own senators to follow his lead. It is his weakness and not the weakness of Céline Dion, who no doubt is very strong in many fields.

On the other question, which is the question of fixed date elections in Bill C-16, let us remember that this is our bill and we very much want to see it in place. If the Liberal Party was so keen on having that become law and having fixed date elections established and if the Liberals actually believed they wanted to see it in place, then they should not have amended it at the eleventh hour. It would have been law today had they not put in place an amendment at the eleventh hour.

Let us examine what that amendment was. It was an amendment that would have had the effect of saying that if a small town of 450 people in northern Ontario decided it wanted to have a referendum on a name change or if another town somewhere in Canada wanted to have a referendum on whether to build an arena, a federal election would have to cancelled.

We do not think that is a basis for cancelling a federal election. In fact, that undermines and defeats the entire purpose of Bill C-16, which is to create an element of certainty so that there cannot be that kind of manipulation of election dates and elections will occur at regular intervals.

That is why we are coming back to the House on Monday to ask the House to communicate to the Senate our wish that the central, original elements of Bill C-16 to establish genuine fixed date elections come into place. We are confident that the House will send that message to the Senate. We hope that in the Senate, if the Liberals are serious about wanting it to come into force, they will heed that message from the Commons and respect the important role of this chamber as the paramount chamber.

As long as the Senate consists of appointed senators, they should be respectful of the wishes of this chamber on important questions of principle, particularly questions of elections and democratic reform. The irony of the Senate questioning the House of Commons on its decisions on when elections should occur, on how our democracy works, is so deep that I am amazed the Liberals can stand in their places and raise questions about it.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I want to let my hon. colleague know that I am a firm believer in fixed election dates, but when I hear the Conservatives or the Liberals talk about the Senate I cannot help but take it with a jaundiced view, to put it in the politest way.

I remind my hon. colleague of the first thing the Conservative government did when it came into office. It appointed one of its Conservative fundraisers from Quebec who said he did not have time to run in an election because he was too busy. That was okay, said the government, and he was appointed as minister and put into the cabinet. When I hear the government talk about Senate changes, I cannot help but take it with a big grain of salt.

My answer for him is quite clear. Instead of tinkering around with the Senate, why does the government not do what most Canadians would like to see done? That is the abolition of the Senate, which we in the NDP have advocated for a long time. I know we need the consensus of the provinces for that, but why does the government not do something really dramatic and bold in this country? Why not stand up and tell Canadians once and for all that we are going to have fixed election dates and bring in proportional representation, but that first we will start off with the abolition of the Senate?

I say that with the greatest respect for all my friends and colleagues in the Senate. The reality is that we do not need it. The provinces do not have senates. They do very well with a single chamber. I believe we can do the same for this country.

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

Mr. Speaker, my friend from the NDP raises a legitimate and valid question when he raises the question of Senate abolition, because it is a very realistic alternative.

It is a very realistic alternative when one looks at how the Senate has been conducting itself in dealing with legislation from this Parliament, in delaying and obstructing a simple bill of 26 words, I believe it is, such as Bill S-4, for example, which is a very short bill. The Senate has been delaying that bill for a year and finding ways to avoid any kind of modest change to its own regime, and its members are creating an advertisement for exactly the position of my friend from the NDP, which is that not only do they lack the legitimacy that Canadians wish to see them have, they lack the legitimacy to even exist if that is how they are going to conduct themselves and utilize their powers. I say that with the greatest of respect.

That is the path down which they are treading and they are certainly creating the constituency for the view held by the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore. On this side of the House, we in the government do not hold that view. We believe it is possible to achieve improvement and incremental reform for the Senate. We do not believe that body is beyond all repair.

Of course the approach my friend suggests would require a constitutional amendment, for which we do not see a consensus in place right now, but we do not believe that is a reason to abandon any efforts to improve and modernize our Senate and strengthen our democracy. That is why we are acting now to try to modernize and improve our Senate, to strengthen our democracy, to make it more responsive to the wishes of Canadians and to do what Canadians have told us they want to see done, which is to have a Senate that has term limits and where Canadians have a say in who represents them.

It is the most fundamental principle in a democratic system. In Canada we live in a democracy. Canadians should have a say in who represents them in passing their laws and granting their wishes on what they want to see as the shape of this country.

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise this morning to speak to Bill C-43, the consultations act. I think everyone understands, who has read the bill, that this is not to provide for the election of senators, but to consult provinces where there are vacancies in the Senate on who might be appointed then by the prime minister. The prime minister will still appoint senators at the end of the day.

It is passing strange to hear the House leader speak of delay. Bill C-43 was first tabled in the House four months ago, and it is only today coming forward for debate. There were many other opportunities to bring it forward. I do not think it should be a purpose of the government to complain about delay. The government had control of it and it has only now brought it forward for debate.

Also, Bill C-16, the fixed election dates, as I mentioned in my intervention, has been stopped in its tracks for want of a minor amendment from the Senate. If the government members had the respect for the Senate, as they suggest, then they would think carefully about the role of the chamber of second sober thoughts. It has thoughtfully looked at the process and determined there is one failure in terms of fixed election dates. Therefore, it has suggested there be a slight amendment for that purpose. I think there must be some other reason why the government will not go along with that. It is in the discretion of the Chief Electoral Officer. That discretion by that officer of Parliament would not be exercised lightly and not in the way the government House leader suggests.

Those on this side of the House have a great deal of respect for the purpose and the work of the Senate.

One example of the value to Canadians of that extraordinary group of people, and they are for the main part, is former Senator Kirby and his health committee. Over a period of years, I think they did the finest work on the ideas to reform and protect the health services of our country. With due respect to all the other commissions across the country and internationally that have looked at it, Senator Kirby's report on health care reform really hit the bell and resonated with Canadians. In fact, very similar conclusions that Senator Kirby's health committee report came to were concurred in by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Chaoulli case. It made many of the same observations about the health of our health care services and what needed to be done to protect them and the rights of citizens under those.

As well, last year Senator Kirby's committee published its mental health report, recommending a national mental health commission. It was done in a way that was thoughtful and sensitive of individuals whose lives were touched, through a family member or friend, by the horrible situation of mental illness.

Those are just examples of how valuable the other place can be to the rights and privileges and services of Canadians.

Let me talk a bit about consultation. We have heard a lot from the government House leader about the government wanting to consult Canadians and it is Canadians who should be consulted, in the words of this bill, for the appointments still of senators.

It is passing strange that Bill S-4, which has been mentioned, Bill C-16, Bill C-43, which we are discussing today, and the Federal Accountability Act, which deals with issues of democratic accountability, have been brought forward by the government before it even put forward its consultation plan.

We know with respect to Bill C-43 that Ontario, Quebec were not consulted about it. Nor were the other provinces or territories. The Governments of Ontario and Quebec have expressed their opposition to this bill as has Yukon. The consultation process was announced a couple of months ago by the Conservative government. It was going to hire a polling firm and a think tank for $900,000, which turns out to be an ideologically based organization. It has come out in favour of keeping the current electoral system in our country, denigrating the idea of proportional representation or any part of it. It was a bogus consultation across the country.

The government did not even wait for that consultation, bogus as it might be, before it brought forward its legislation. That is a strange process. We have seen criticism and problems with it since it started.

There is another irony here. Electoral reform, as another aspect of democratic reform, was put in the Speech from the Throne. The NDP put forward that amendment and it was accepted by the government of the day. In time a legislative committee was set up to look at that issue and to have real cross-country consultations conducted by members of Parliament, who have the responsibility to do that consultation, not polling companies and overpaid ideological think tanks holding a few so-called deliberative discussions behind closed doors. We must get on with that work before too long, certainly before we go ahead with rash changes to our electoral system.

Another irony is this. The Law Commission of Canada, which is an independent, statutory public body that works independently of government, came up with a report in the spring of 2004 on electoral reform in Canada. I invite government members, who would care to rise for commentary and questions, to comment on whether they have read that report. I invite anyone who rises to first comment on the wisdom of that report on two aspects; first, the indepth research that was done; and second, the indepth consultation across the country.

I have read a number of these reports from different countries. I know the respect that the Law Commission of Canada is held in throughout the Commonwealth and the common law world. The report is perhaps the finest treatment of the question of electoral reform in a modern democracy that has ever been written. I look forward to commentary from government members on that.

I guess the triple irony is that the Law Commission of Canada, as announced in the government's economic update in the fall, has had its budget cut to zero as of April 1. It is extraordinary. This is while we are paying ideological flacks $900,000 to gather some bogus public consultation on democratic reform, yet we have this respected body. I am sure some members have not even read the report.

That is another aspect of democratic responsibility. Imagine having the Law Commission of Canada Act, an act of Parliament, disrespected by the government. There are statutory responsibilities under that act to perform services for Canadians. The government, without having the courage to bring legislation to repeal the Law Commission of Canada Act, has cut its budget. It sounds kind of like the gun registry. I do not want to get too off course here, but it is an elementary question of democracy. It has had no courage to bring legislation before this House to repeal the gun registry. Rather it frustrates it. It gives endless time for people to register their guns.

They are laughing across the way. Whenever we talk about democracy and the gun legislation, let us remember earlier this week when the Canadian Police Association came to Ottawa to talk to parliamentarians. The single most important message that the president, on behalf of the police organization, had for us as parliamentarians was it used the gun registry 6,000 times a day, including the long gun registry. He said it was valuable.

Let me now turn to the specifics of Bill C-43, reform of the Senate. I will talk about Bill C-43 in a different context, in the context of Senate reform exactly. Yes, members on this side of the House are in favour of reform. Members in the official opposition are in favour of Senate reform. However, it has to be comprehensive reform and not piecemeal reform.

The trouble with piecemeal reform is this. The Senate, the traditions and the institution of that important body of Parliament, are a Rubik's cube of at least three colours. Two of those colours represent the selection process, including the term of office, and the mandate. Remember we have to think about the mandate of its relationship to the House. If they are identical with identical electoral status, then we will get gridlock. To avoid that, if the mandate is going to be exact with the same electoral legitimacy, then we had better have a dispute resolution mechanism to resolve gridlock when it occurs or the governance of the people of Canada could be frustrated.

The third colour in the Rubik's cube is distribution. Of the issues before us today, this perhaps is the most important. I look across the aisle at government members from British Columbia and Alberta. I cannot believe government members from British Columbia and Alberta could support giving greater powers, greater credibility and greater authority to the other place without a redistribution of seats to fairly treat British Columbia and Alberta, which are woefully underrepresented in the other place.

Let me quote from the preamble of Bill C-43, second clause:

WHEREAS the Government of Canada has undertaken to explore means to enable the Senate better to reflect the democratic values of Canadians and respond to the needs of Canada’s regions;

The bill tries to selectively deal with electoral matters and bring in greater credibility, therefore, power to the Senate, but leaves British Columbia and Alberta so woefully underrepresented.

Let me go back to the government House leader's point that Bill S-4, the bill introduced in the other place to deal with fixed terms for the appointment of senators, has lots of positive support. The trouble is this creates another problem that has to be dealt with on distribution. Other senators, Liberal senators and a former Progressive Conservative senator, put forward, for consideration by the same Senate committee, the idea that there be a redistribution by giving more seats to the four western provinces so the horrid imbalance and disadvantage to the west could be corrected, and without constitutional change as well. It would be an addition of extra Senate seats, but it would balance, for the first time, the rights of the people of western Canada.

This is why Bill S-4 has been held up for the last year in the Senate. It is not because of term limits. Everybody agrees there should be term limits. It is to get the distribution and that is the Rubik's cube that has to come into conformity before we can give greater mandate or greater credibility. Therefore, let us do it all at once.

I keep hearing that we cannot have constitutional change, that we cannot possibly open the Constitution to deal with something of such importance.This timidity would make the Fathers of Confederation blush if they thought they could not do anything to the institution in a constitutional way. One can only think of what would have happened if those fathers meeting in Charlottetown had the timidity of the members of the government today who say that we cannot go near the Constitution.

Let us think carefully about this but let us do it all at once, by all means, and let us do it comprehensively and do it properly.

I want to talk very briefly about other areas of electoral and democratic reform which have been raised by the House leader.

Parliamentary reform is very important. We saw with the last Liberal government a number of elements of parliamentary reform that came in, sometimes by resolution of opposition members at the time. One was the three line whip by the former Liberal government to allow for votes of conscience, free votes, two line whips for people not in cabinet and full votes of conscience. We see that regularly in this party in official opposition. We saw it regularly in the previous Parliament of the previous Liberal government. We do not see it across the aisle here. I do not recall, and I try to watch quite carefully, one vote that has been brought forward where members of the government have been, apparently, free to vote.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

How was that hepatitis C vote? How did that vote go?

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

I was not here at that time. I am a very recent member.

Another area of parliamentary reform is floor crossing. The NDP, to its credit, brought forward a bill two years ago but it was inadequate. However, I personally brought forward an amendment to the Federal Accountability Act to deal with floor crossing to allow for a limited recall. That would have gone through, even though it was ruled to be out of order, but we had a vote to see whether it could be re-instituted and, unfortunately, the government voted against it. It voted against recall for floor crossing, which is interesting. All members from any party would have been subject by now to that fine provision of parliamentary reform.

I will speak to one other area of parliamentary reform and that is the secret ballot for the chairs of House committees. I think it came from a Conservative resolution when the Liberal government was in power. It was accepted and there were secret ballots for committee chairs. That has been rolled back so that now it is back in the PMO.

We are talking about democracy and all of these things. The trouble is that we cannot just pick and choose, which is, of course, the weakness of Bill C-43. It is piecemeal. It is not comprehensive.

The other issue is public engagement because we are talking about consultations with the public for ideas on who should be appointed to the Senate, which is now done by the Prime Minister at his discretion. Public consultation needs information. A very important part of that information to the public so they can properly be consulted and provide advice to us as legislators is provided through the access to information legislation.

In the last election campaign, the Prime Minister, very broadly, boldly and without any shadow of a doubt, said that the Federal Accountability Act would be the first bill the government would bring forward if he were elected and that it would incorporate the whole access to information draft bill that the Information Commissioner had brought forward at the request of a parliamentary committee.

What was brought forward was just a minor part of it in the Federal Accountability Act. In fact, the Information Commissioner, highly regarded and respected, and actually consulted by all of us, including the present government, for his advice, called the so-called access to information provisions of the Federal Accountability Act retrograde and dangerous. This is our officer of Parliament, now the government, who pledged during his election campaign to incorporate all of his suggested open government act provisions in there.

Let us do this right. If we really see flaws, inadequacies or things that are out of date, we need the courage to say that an unelected legislative body in a modern democracy is an anachronism. I think we all feel that. We need to get together and fix it comprehensively without causing more difficulties rather than solving the democratic deficit of this particular aspect of our democracy.

[Dick Harris, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, after listening to the member for Vancouver Quadra speak, I understand why he will not be seeking re-election again. It must be very embarrassing and very difficult to stand in the House and defend the record of the previous Liberal government and compare it to the progressiveness and the moving ahead steps that this new Conservative government is taking.

I hearken back to 1993 when I came to this House and, unfortunately, had to sit through three successive majority Liberal governments that had all the opportunity in the world to make whatever changes they wanted as to how government was run and pass them through and yet we saw zero, nada.

We then had a period of a minority government under the member for LaSalle—Émard who basically dithered away his year and a half in office without even attempting to do anything. Now we have this government trying its best to make this place more democratic and those members have the audacity to stand and try to criticize it. My God, where does the embarrassment stop?

The member said that we had disregarded public consultations with respect to recommendations to the Senate. A province-wide vote was held twice in Alberta to identify who the people of Alberta wanted to represent them in the Senate. The first person was Stan Waters who was appointed, and rightly so, by the prime minister of the day. Now we have Mr. Bert Brown who is about to be appointed to the Senate after having gone through two votes by the people of Alberta. How much of a more purer public consultation is there than to have hundreds of thousands of people voting for that person?

The last thing I would like to mention is the access to information. One of the first steps we took was to include certain crown corporations under access to information. The former Liberal government could have done this so easily but it refused because it had a closed little cadre of puppets working in some of the crown corporations. The Liberals did not want to give any information out.

This government is getting things done. The Liberals had 13 years to do things and they did not get the job done. Now they think it is just not fair that we are getting things done.

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in the member's commentary he did not say whether he had read the Law Commission of Canada report that I mentioned and I think he should really do that. It is very enlightening with respect to reforming all our institutions in Canada. That is actually something very important that the last Liberal government set up in 1997, one of the most respected law reform bodies in the common law world. The former previous Conservative government cancelled the old law reform commission, which was also highly respected. It took us a few years to get that done. Of course, we had to deal with the $42 billion a year deficit that the former Conservative government left the new Liberal government in 1993.

The member talked about the former prime minister, the member for LaSalle—Émard, not getting anything done. What about the national consultations; the deep research; the major policy initiatives on child care development policies; the cities agenda, to which everyone agreed; the Kelowna agreement, to which everyone agreed; and, the international policy statement, which is now being perverted by the present government's actions and directions in Afghanistan? Those are tremendous aspects of policy that came in, in those two short years that, unfortunately, were shortened by, if I may say so, the unnecessary last election.

The government is going piecemeal. It must go comprehensively. If we really want things down, we need to open it up in the Senate and do it properly.

We must remember that Bert Brown, who may go to the Senate, plowed into his barley field three Es, not one E.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

It was actually a wheat field.

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

No, it was barley. Whether it is wheat or barley, the government says that it wants choice in wheat and barley. His choice was three Es, not one E. He knew it had to be comprehensive. While I am sure he is delighted at the prospect of being appointed by the Prime Minister to the Senate, he would like to see three Es, not just one. He knew they had to be all at once.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my colleague's take on the bill. I know he has been a strong proponent for democratic reform. I also know that people should be judged by their actions and not just their words.

It was interesting when one of the Conservative members mentioned, I think it was a Freudian slip, that it was a consolation for our new senator. I think he had it right, it is a consolation for people who have done work for the old party.

In this case, the first action the government took was to appoint a backroom fundraiser of the Conservative Party to the Senate. It is interesting, is it not, that the first action of the government, a government that purportedly wanted to take up electoral reform, supposedly, and Senate reform, appointed one of its friends and then vaulted him into the cabinet.

I wonder if the member could connect what the government is putting in front of us now with its first actions. Sorry, it was its second one. It had the floor crossing with the Minister of International Trade and then it had the appointment to the Senate. Could the hon. member connect the actions and the words of the government?

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

I know the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra is very anxious to respond but he will have to wait till a little later this day because it is now 11 o'clock and accordingly the rules require that I proceed with statements by members. The member will have two minutes remaining in the time for his remarks when the debate is resumed.

The House resumed from April 20 consideration of the motion that Bill C-43, An Act to provide for consultations with electors on their preferences for appointments to the Senate, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on Bill C-43, An Act to provide for consultations with electors on their preferences for appointments to the Senate.

I want to begin my comments with a historical perspective. It is interesting to go back to the beginning of our country and the constitutional debates in Quebec at the Quebec conference and the debates around the Senate. In fact, those debates were some of the longest debates, and some would say they were controversial, about what should be done in terms of that new idea, the new formation called Canada.

There had been a consensus about reforming and having responsible government. Indeed, after the rebellions in 1837, we saw it in 1841. The concept and the idea of responsible government had been born. The rebellions built on Upper and Lower Canada had taken place. In 1841 we saw the idea of responsible government after the Durham report, with all its ills, but there were some good things in it, and then in the Quebec conference in the discussion around what should be done in terms of a new country and the formation of a confederation.

In those debates, there were discussions among the reformers at the time, who were very different from the reformers of more recent times. The Browns, for instance, actually believed that an elected Senate at the time would be problematic. That is interesting to note because at the time Brown and his movement, the reformers of the time, were laying down the markers for what they believed would be more responsible and more representative government.

Yet there was a consensus at the time, after much debate, as I have said, to have an appointed Senate. The reason people gave was that they believed the two houses had to be given certain jurisdictions and responsibilities. There was a concern at the time that one house should not have dominance over the other house, notwithstanding the obvious submission of people who saw a democratically elected house as better than an appointed one.

These people shared some concerns. Many of the reformers at the time trumpeted the comments of John Stuart Mill, who said in 1861:

An assembly which does not rest on the basis of some great power in the country is ineffectual against one which does.

People consciously knew that by way of agreeing to an appointed Senate the upper house would not trump the House of Commons. They were very deliberate, because they did not want to see the quagmire. They saw the upper house as a check.

They were concerned about the experience in the United States at the time. We have to recall our history. The American civil war had just happened. People were very conscious of it. One of the reasons Confederation came together, notwithstanding the Fenian raids, was due to the concern about the Americans' creep north, so to speak.

They wanted to get it right. They wanted to make sure it was different. They wanted to make sure there were proper checks and balances. They subscribed to the idea of an appointed house.

I will go back in history to re-Confederation in terms of what the debates were at the Quebec conference, because it is very important to understand our history in order to understand where we are now and to understand this bill.

In essence what the reformers of the time were saying, Macdonald and others, was that we needed a balance. They wanted to make sure that the upper house was not going to trump the lower house, so that, as John Stuart Mill said, we would not have one “assembly which rests on the basis of some great power in the country”, i.e. the people, and one that would cause a disproportionate balance.

Because, if we look at the structure of the Senate, we see that there were senators appointed. We have to recall that it was the east and west, and the Maritimes were still discussing whether there would be a maritime union. Senators would not be appointed based on representation of exact population. It was very important that it was going to be an appointed Senate.

Delegates at the Quebec conference believed that to have responsible government, the principle that was fought for in the rebellions of 1837 and the act in 1841, there had to be responsible representation by population government in the House of Commons and oversight from the Senate.

If we fast forward to where we are now, this bill is not proposing an overview of what the Senate's roles and responsibilities are. It does not take into consideration, in my opinion, what the initial debate was in this place with the former Reform Party about the so-called triple E Senate. It is not a discussion that really deals with what the Senate's role and responsibilities are. It is simply a way to get around the obvious problem of having an appointed body in 2007. We have not evolved to having a body that is actually democratically respected and responsible.

The fundamental problem with this bill is that it is a half measure. It says that we can have a plebiscite. We have not quite decided yet how that is to be done, but let us say it is in a federal election. The plebiscite goes forward and the person who is nominated goes to the Prime Minister, who makes the appointment.

What it does not do is deal with the whole quagmire of the role of the upper house. That is fundamentally what should be dealt with. That is really what Canadians want. It is what many people believe the former Reform Party really wanted to deal with.

This bill skirts the Constitution because it does not open the Constitution to deal with the problem. It is simply a plebiscite of sorts to find out who is the most popular person to be appointed by the Prime Minister. That might sound good to some people. I am sure the governing party will say that it is a great thing, that it would be a step in the right direction and an incremental and positive step. We may see that as being the case, except when we look at what the government has done in the area of democratic reform and judge it on its record to date.

One bill that the NDP subscribed to and supported was Bill C-16, a bill that would fix election dates and will hopefully be enacted very soon. It was an idea that our party came up with. My predecessor, Mr. Broadbent, put it forward in his ethics package before the last election. The government then took it off the NDP shelf, put it into its platform, brought it before the House and everyone agreed to it. It made sense.

We agreed that we should not open the Constitution for that particular bill. We did that because it was something that could be done without affecting the structure and functions of our Parliament. It was a process in terms of how election dates are set and it did not deal with undermining the whole idea of a minority Parliament and confidence. It was fine.

This bill is a sidestep on the Constitution. For that reason alone, personally I cannot support it. If we continue to skirt the Constitution, I think we are going down a dangerous road. I submit that the government has to understand that the Constitution is not a suggestion list. It is not something for which we say, “Maybe we would like to do this”. It is a fundamental foundation of our country and of the structure of this place and obviously of the other place.

If we are going to talk about substantive change and real democratic reform, then what we need to do is have an honest debate in this country. To be fair, the former Reform Party tried to do that. It attempted to have a so-called triple E Senate.

However, the Conservative government simply wants to do an end run around the Constitution and say, “Here, we have a plebiscite, we will rubber stamp the plebiscite choice, and the Prime Minister will appoint the person”. It does absolutely nothing to the roles and responsibilities of the upper house.

In fact, we will have a house that will have some people who are deemed to have been chosen by the people and some who are appointed, those who are flying, so to speak, on different octane, and people will ask who legitimately speaks for the other place. Is it the person who is there by way of plebiscite or the person who is appointed? It creates a quagmire for the upper house and therefore for this place.

On those points alone, I believe we cannot support the bill.

I want to now turn to where the government is on democratic reform. It is very sad to see that the government has decided not to embrace what the previous Parliament put forward through the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, which was to go out to citizens and have a citizens' engagement on democratic reform and also have a House of Commons committee going out to Canadians to speak on democratic reform and find out what Canadians' ideas are.

Sadly, what the government came up with has been a disaster. The government will not admit that, but I know it has been a disaster. The government has had to backtrack and reassign contracts. It has gone to so-called “non-special interests”, which is laughable, and I will tell the House who it is, to go to Canadians and have a focus group on what they believe democratic reform should look like.

The paper that has been put out is called “Public Consultations on Canada's Democratic Institutions and Practices”. I have the participants' workbook here. I did not get it from the government website but actually from a participant who recently went through the process and procedure.

Mr. Speaker, you will know the group because it is out of Winnipeg. It is the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. I will not say anything too negative about the Frontier group, but what I can say genuinely is that it is not an objective think tank. Some have said that it makes the Fraser Institute look left wing, but I will not subscribe to what those others have said.

On its website, the Frontier group says it fundamentally does not believe in ideas like proportional representation. This is the group that the government has hired, with taxpayers' money, to talk to Canadians about democratic reform. So when the government presents a bill, Bill C-43 on Senate reform and change--

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order which is perhaps irrelevant now, but I was going to ask the hon. member to refer to Bill C-43 as opposed to electoral reform and the process for looking at the lower house.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am surprised that the hon. member brings it up because in the contract the government assigned to the Frontier Centre, it is actually talking about democratic reform, so I might table this later so the hon. member can have a look at it. It actually questions later on table 5, about how to reform the Upper House. So, I think it is entirely relevant and I will provide a copy to the hon. member.

I brought this up because it is related to Bill C-43. The government has introduced a bill to deal with the Senate. On the other hand, it is out there hiring friends of the government to talk to Canadians about democratic reform.

I want to explain that initially Conservatives hired a group that went out to find participants for this consultation and sadly, the group they had subcontracted to did not really know what they were doing. They phoned Democracy Watch and asked if it could provide participants for their consultation. Duff Conacher was none too pleased when he found out that Democracy Watch was being asked to provide participants for everyday Canadians to speak on democratic reform. So Democracy Watch was fired and another group was hired and now we have this flawed process in front of us.

We see in chapter 4 of this public consultation, which is again a bit of an oxymoron because no one can actually get the document, where it talks about Canada's Senate today, and it talks about what this group believes should be done and asks what Canadians, through its hand-picked group, what they think about it.

I bring that up because it is very important that Canadians know the agenda of the government. The agenda of the government is to pretend to be doing democratic reform. If it honestly wanted to engage in democratic reform, it would support the motion the NDP is going to put forward to do what the previous Parliament, through the procedure and House affairs committee, had committed to do. That was to have a parallel process of a parliamentary committee speaking to Canadians about democratic reform. It could engage this place and the other place, and leave it up to Canadians to decide. It could have a citizens' consultation that would be a little less biased than the Frontier Centre.

If we look at Bill C-43, it actually tells Canadians already what they should be doing. They should be supporting the government's idea of a plebiscite with the Prime Minister appointing.

Just to recap, constitutionally going back to the Quebec conference and looking at what exactly the Fathers of Confederation envisioned, because it was all men at the time, and what they thought the upper house should be doing, they said it should not be elected at the time. Even the reformers at the time agreed to that.

We are now in 2007. Most people would believe that the process, and we see it with the House of Lords in England which is being challenged right now to reform itself, needs to be more than just a half measure, more than just a plebiscite so the Prime Minister can appoint. What we need to have is real reform.

I want to emphatically underline the fact that the government is on the wrong path for democratic reform and remind Conservatives that it was one of the predecessors of the now Conservative Party who talked about a triple E Senate. Two Es have fallen off the table with their intent now.

They think that they can fool Canadians by telling them they have had real Senate reform by having a popularity contest and a rubber stamp from the Prime Minister. Canadians will not be fooled. Our party will not be fooled. This place, I am sure, will not be fooled when we hear from the other parties.

However, the issue of democratic reform should be put in front of Canadians genuinely. Our party has said we believe that the mixed member system is a good idea and we have done that deliberately because we need to have a debate in this country about democratic reform.

The Reform Party, to give it credit, believed in a triple E Senate and put an idea forward. We are not sure where the Liberal Party stands on it and I am not sure the Bloc really has an idea on the issue because it is an issue for all of Canada.

What we need is to have ideas put forward in front of Canadians, so that we can have a genuine debate. Bill C-43 does not do that. It is simply saying to let us have an end run around the Constitution, let us have a half measure and say that we have done something.

I think that would be a disservice to Canadians and even to the Fathers of Confederation, the founders of the country, because they would have wanted, and I cite George Brown from the debates during the Quebec conference, genuine reform, not this tinkering and saying that by way of a plebiscite with the Prime Minister having the ultimate power, that this would be real reform. He would be flipping in his grave right now if he say the government putting this forward and calling it real reform.

I will sum up by essentially giving our party's position. We will not be supporting the bill. It is a half measure. It does not deal with real democratic reform and does absolutely nothing to deal with the issue of the roles and responsibilities of the other place.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Secretary of State and Chief Government Whip]

Mr. Speaker, I really do not know where to begin after that presentation by my colleague from the New Democratic Party, but I must say at the outset that it certainly does not surprise me.

All too often we see when parties and governments endeavour to make some substantive reform, some change, they run into this type of nonsense. Certainly, in the nearly 14 years that I have been here, I have confronted this at every turn. I remember the former Prime Minister, Mr. Chrétien. I remember the immediate past Prime Minister, the member for LaSalle—Émard, spouting the same kind of nonsense, that if we cannot have this all encompassing dramatic reform, then nothing is worthwhile.

The member used the terms “tinkering” and “half measures”, and that is why he is not going to support it. Even a cursory examination of reforms that have taken place in other countries would show that all too often this is how we have to begin. We have to start somewhere to make some change and get the ball rolling.

Our Parliament is well over 130 years old and that archaic other place, the Senate, still has vacancies filled by appointment. The current Prime Minister is the first Prime Minister who has decided to take definitive action by taking some steps to change that after all that time.

I am the first one to admit that this is not a triple E. We are not trying to fool Canadians into believing that somehow the bill is going to bring about an instantaneous triple E Senate. I still believe in the principle of a triple E Senate. I got involved in that. I used to proudly wear the three E lapel pin. I still have it at home.

I have not lost my desire to see that type of dramatic and substantive reform to the upper chamber in this country, but the reality is that we have to start somewhere.

I would suggest that this is a start. If we look at what happened in the United States when the Americans eventually arrived at a triple E senate, their senate was filled by appointments as well. But a few states started the process, just as Alberta has started the process in Canada, and it grew from there. This legislation will accomplish that.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know where to start as well. Let us start off with the tradition of the Westminster model. I was sad to hear the member refer to a political structure that is highly irrelevant to ours.

I encourage him to read the debates of the Quebec conference, read the debates about what the House was supposed to do. He is suggesting that we can do a little end run around the Constitution. That is not good enough for Canadians. It does not respect the history of this country. Responsible government is about being just that.

The bill says that we do not have to worry about the Constitution. We can do a little end run around it and the Prime Minister can rubber stamp it. That is not good enough.

I am sorry, but for that member to call this substantive change in that incrementally that is the way it is done, he should look at the Westminster model. No one has done this. It requires a constitutional change. If the member does not like the other place, then it should be abolished and the government could then bring forward real reform.

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

Which is your position?

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Absolutely, that is our position. We have been consistent on it.

Then we have to take a look at how to represent people. I am absolutely shocked that a member from British Columbia would not address the fact that there is disproportionate representation in the other place to his region and he thinks it is okay. I am gobsmacked.

[Ken Epp, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I remember when I was first elected in 1993 and we had a very strong issue with respect to an elected Senate. I remember standing over there and asking the then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien why the list of his party hacks was a better source of choices for a Senate appointment than the list provided by the people in an election. I would like the member to answer that. In both cases the prime minister would appoint the senator, but which list would he use? In this legislation the list would be from the people.

[An hon. member]

Selected by the people.

[Ken Epp, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Selected by the people or selected from among party hacks, which would the member prefer? I would like him to be very specific and answer this question, and not go on a big rant on another topic.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, surely the member is not asking the New Democratic Party to support party hacks being appointed to the other place. We are the only party that has been consistent with respect to this issue. When the Conservative Party was putting its bagmen into the upper house, we were the only party before the Reform Party came around to criticize that. There is no argument here. I am not sure if the member has convenient amnesia about our party's position.

My mentor, as a kid and a hero to this day, Tommy Douglas, used to say Tweedledum and Tweedledee. That is what we have here with the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party. The government is just deciding what way it can get its friends into the other place.

This is not going to work. It is not going to work because it is really not democratic. Do we need change? Absolutely. Is this the right kind of change? Absolutely not.

In the end, it does not deal with the fundamental issue of the role of the Senate. Certain senators, and I mentioned this in my comments, will be deemed as representing the people and others not. It will be utter confusion.

One day in the green and pleasant land for the Conservatives, all senators will be elected. I am sure they will have to deal with the issue of proportionality, as I mentioned to my friend from B.C., in terms of dealing with who is represented. Is the representation for P.E.I. versus B.C. acceptable right now? Absolutely not. Is that more important right now? Absolutely. It is part of the equation. That needs to be dealt with. We need real democratic change and not tinkering, and that is the problem with this bill.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Ottawa Centre for bringing a lot of substance to this debate by giving a historical view of how the Senate came about and what the real issues are before us.

I also thank him for the work he has been doing on this file in terms of bringing forward the substantive issues on democratic reform, as did the previous member for Ottawa Centre, Ed Broadbent. It was Ed Broadbent who really picked this up and set before Parliament the real qualitative changes that need to be made. The current member for Ottawa Centre is continuing that work.

The problem with this bill, like so many other bills that come forward, is that it is just window dressing. When we think of organizations like Fair Vote Canada or the Citizens' Assembly that took place in British Columbia, these are substantive processes that show there is a hunger out in the communities to address democratic reform.

I find it interesting that both the present government and the previous government had ministers responsible for democratic reform and yet we saw nothing happen. I think part of the question here is the process for arriving at democratic reform. I would like the member for Ottawa Centre to comment on that in terms of the kind of process we need to see, rather than this phony one that is set up for these focus groups, to actually engage people in the question of democratic reform.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I laid that out. We have a motion in front of this House of what we think is the model. The Conservatives need to go to Canadians, not to their friends in the Frontier group or to paid consultants. Canadians are thirsting to contribute but the government puts up barriers every time Canadians want to be heard.

What we need is a process that all parliamentarians agreed to in the last Parliament, which is a Citizens' Assembly engagement and a parliamentary committee. We need to do our work. We should not pay consultants to do it. Canadians sent us here to listen to their good ideas.

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

Mr. Speaker, I had actually hoped to ask the hon. member for Ottawa Centre a question but maybe after my speech he will want to intervene during the long period for questions and comments.

I had wanted to ask the member if we remembers his predecessor, Ed Broadbent, a man I liked and admired and still do. I wonder if he remembers that Ed Broadbent and I had a difference of opinion in the procedure and House affairs committee concerning a report, to which he is referring, about changes to the electoral system and that the process for searching out this change existed. Mr. Broadbent advocated a system very similar to the one the government has actually implemented. Conservative members actually advocated a much broader consultation but, when we pushed hard on it, Mr. Broadbent organized a walk out from the committee to deny us a quorum and then raised the matter in the House.

What I am getting at is that there has been a reversal of position here and I think everyone should be aware of that. I would like the member to comment on why the New Democrats, or at least he, have now switched to a position of favouring narrowing consultations, although he says that he is now in favour of a citizens' assembly as well, which they opposed at the time. I am actually a little unsure of which particular iteration of the changing position he is on at the moment. I will leave that thought with him. This is not strictly relevant to Bill C-43 and the Senate, which is the subject to which I will now turn.

When the end of the government comes, be it soon, be it off in the distant future, the bill and the work we have done on democratizing our Canadian institutions, this bill and other bills along the same lines, will be regarded as the greatest accomplishment of the government unless they are totally blocked by the other parties, in which case they will be regarded as the greatest missed opportunity that this Parliament had.

I just want to go through and mention some of the legislation we have put forward, of which Bill C-43 forms a package. We have Bill S-4, which would create fixed terms for senators, and it is in the upper House. That bill has been executed, not as part of a grandiose single package but as a separate piecemeal, to use the word that the member for LaSalle—Émard, the former prime minister, used to use, or incremental reform. The adoption of that bill is very important if we are to move to electing senators so that we are electing people for fixed terms.

The advisory consultations or informal elections that would take place for senators is another step in that package, and that is what Bill C-43 is all about.

We also have Bill C-31, which is designed to reduce to the extent possible electoral fraud throughout the country. We have also moved to change electoral financing rules. This would be very significant in reducing the influence of corporations, unions and non-voters in the financing of our elections and, therefore, the manner in which our decisions take place.

Those are all substantial moves forward. However, what is of particular importance is the work we are doing on the Senate. I am surprised at the way this gets belittled by some members of the House. This is an extraordinary measure. Canada has had an unelected chamber as its upper House for over 100 years. We are not quite unique in the world but we are getting closer and closer to being unique in the world in having an unelected upper House with full powers. It is an equal House to this one, with the exception of its inability to create money bills, and yet it is completely unelected.

This was a model that was considered by the Australians when they were designing their Senate over 100 years ago and rejected as being antiquated. They opted for an elected Senate.

We are looking at the replacement, in the member's words, incremental replacement, but we are looking at the replacement of an antiquated way of doing things with the modern and democratic way of doing things.

I want to talk a little bit about some of the things I think are important. Let me begin with a really basic one, which is the need for bicamerals and the need for a federation like Canada to have a bicameral system as opposed to a unicameral system where there is one chamber. This is a matter where I respectfully disagree with the position of the hon. member's party.

I would just point to the examples of federations in the world. Many countries claim to be federations but many of them are not real federations. For example, the Comoros Islands claim to be a federation but it is not a real federation. However, there are several long lived and successful examples of federal systems. Canada, of course, is one and Switzerland, the United States and Australia are others. We can also look at Germany and Austria. What we see in all of these cases is that they have, through one means or another, an elected upper chamber. In particular, the examples that are closest to Canada would be Australia and the United States but they have elected upper houses.

There are a number of purposes for having two chambers. One is to allow, and this is using the language of the Fathers of Confederation, a chamber of sober second thought, a place where decisions that may be taken in haste in this House can be examined, perhaps improved and sent back to us. As we know, the Senate is not shy even now about sending back measures that have been passed in this House for reconsideration.

Unfortunately, sometimes I think the Senate does so excessively on the basis of the interests of the partisanship of the party that put the senators there. That is a long term history. If we go back and look at the appointed Senate, it has either acquiesced completely to the government in power when the majority in the Senate reflects the majority in the lower house, or it has been unnecessarily obstructionist. That is a fundamental flaw with an appointed Senate, appointed effectively by the prime minister because the Governor General always takes the prime minister's advice on Senate appointments.

A significant change and improvement would be to move away from a Senate that is, depending on the moment, either a lapdog or excessively aggressive to one that gives considered sober second thought. That can be accomplished by an elected upper house. All we need to do is look at the examples that I have cited of other mature, responsible federations to see how this can work.

The other thing about an elected upper house is that it will tend to be elected on a separate mandate, both geographically and in terms of the electoral system we propose and also, to some degree, in terms of timing from the lower house that provides a different cross-section of Canadian public opinion and public sentiment over a broad period of time. The classic federalism theory is that we ought to have counterbalancing mandates for the upper and lower houses.

I want to turn now to the question of incremental reform, that which the former prime minister and now the hon. member for Ottawa Centre have derided as piecemeal reform versus wholesale reform. We have an unhappy series of experiments in our recent history with attempts at mega-constitutional reform. They have not been successful. I am thinking here of the Meech Lake accord and the Charlottetown accord. We are trying to move away from that.

The simple, practical reason for moving away from that to incremental reform is that it works. Incremental reform, making changes that are possible, does not involve hanging us up the way the country got hung up on the Meech Lake accord in which the part of the accord that had the highest threshold for approval became the standard by which everything had to be dealt with, which effectively guaranteed that it would be impossible to get it through.

The problem with wholesale reform is that in order to change the terms of senators and the way in which senators are selected, and to move from an appointed to an elected or an advisory elected system, and the changing of the regions and the representation by regions would involve, by necessity, moving to the seven-fifty amendment formula, which means having the approval of seven provincial legislatures representing 50% of the population on the very sticky issue of who should get how many senators.

While I would certainly agree that British Columbia is very underrepresented, which I think we can all agree on, we may discover, as we try to put in more seats for British Columbia and other provinces, that we may not get a national consensus on that. It is easy to say that we should get a consensus, but I would encourage the hon. member, if he gets a chance to stand up, to perhaps provide the percentage, the number of seats he would offer for each province and see whether he would get the support of all provinces or even of his party in all provinces on this subject. There is not a national consensus on this point. We can throw the baby out with the bathwater, which was the approach of the former prime minister, and say that since we cannot get to perfection from here we cannot go anywhere.

However, I still advocate perfection, an unspecified kind of perfection, but I advocate it, or we can work on practical piecemeal incremental reform. This is the route to success. I invite all hon. members to look at the history of elected upper houses in the federations that most closely resemble our own, the Australians, the Swiss and the Americans. What everyone will notice is that in each case they went from much less democratic institutions to much more democratic institutions: to equal, elected, effective senates by means of incremental reform.

For example, 101 years ago was the anniversary of the election of the first American senator. It was an informal election held in the state of Oregon in 1906. Prior to that date, state legislatures had appointed senators. The famous Lincoln-Douglas debates in the 1850s were not debates between two men seeking direct office. They were seeking to cause people to influence their votes for the state House of Representatives, which would then choose which of those two people would go on to the senate.

That changed through the action of one state. Once that state acted, other states began to act the same way. There was a popular groundswell in support of elections and by 1913 the constitution was amended. In short, piecemeal reform produced a breaking of an impasse that would have continued to exist had there been an attempt of wholesale reform.

Australia moved from a first past the post system for its upper house, which was its initial system, to a proportional system. Again, that was done incrementally through piecemeal constitutional reform.

If I have time I will return to this. I note the system we have proposed in the upper house does involve a system of proportional representation known as a single transferrable vote. It is the same system, with some improvements, that exists in the Australian upper house and a number of other countries, including Ireland and Malta. It is a great success in producing more proportional representation.

I mention this simply because part of the critique raised by my predecessor, the hon. member for Ottawa Centre, was that the government was doing nothing on electoral reform. I suggest that moving from completely unelected partisan appointments by the prime minister to a system of proportional representation in the upper house is the greatest move toward any kind of proportional representation we have seen anywhere in this country's history. It is a great accomplishment.

I have mentioned how we are moving in this direction incrementally.

I point out that not only do we require the 7/50 amendment formula, which I would suggest is practically impossible, to move to a different representation province relative to other provinces in the upper house, we require the same thing to abolish the Senate.

While there are people who support abolition of the Senate, in fact the hon. member's whole party would support that, it requires the support of seven provinces with half the population. I think we will find that is just as difficult to attain as a process for changing the proportional representation of the provinces in the upper house. In practice, it is as Utopian as the other suggestion and leads to the fundamental problem of essentially leaving us with the status quo.

The Prime Minister is faced with a choice of attempting to act incrementally, as he is doing, or simply going to direct appointments based upon his own preferences, which might be wise or might be entirely partisan, who is to say, but they would not be democratic by definition.

The problem here, constitutionally, is that there is a section of the Constitution, specifically section 42(1) of the Constitution Act, which deals with and explains our amending formula as it relates to, among other things, the amendment of the Senate. The following categories of rules regarding the Senate are constitutionally protected and cannot be changed without the 7/50 formula.

The Governor General's power to appoint senators cannot be changed without the 7/50 formula. That is why the law is structured as it is. It is a Senate consultations act. It is not a Senate elections act because these are formally consultations. In Canada it is the convention. We have come to understand that the Governor General's power to appoint means in practice a prime minister's unfettered right to advise the Governor General and to expect his advice to be taken without question.

That cannot be changed except, as we are doing, through a law that effectively creates a convention. To those who object to the idea that we should move incrementally and use conventions for our Constitution, I point out that so much of our Constitution is conventional, such as the notion of a prime minister at all. The prime minister is not mentioned in the Constitution. He is purely a convention. This is a very honoured place in our system. In fact, I do not think our Constitution could function without conventions having a central role.

The constitutional qualification for Senators is one cannot become a Senator in Canada unless one is 35 years old. I do not think that is terribly fair, although I feel it is a bit fairer than I did when I was under 35. However, we do not have the power to change that provision, without the 7/50 formula, much as I would like to see that change. Perhaps that can be a non-controversial amendment in the future that all members could support.

I note that constitutional scholars over the years have been clear that the government's approach would not constitute a breach of the relevant sections of the Constitution. It can be done through non-constitutional means.

What we see here is the way mature federal systems act. If we take a look at other federations, one of the things that distinguishes their constitutional history from Canada's recent constitutional history, not Canada's entire constitutional history, for the last say 40 years is this.

In countries like Switzerland, Australia and the United States we see small incremental constitutional amendments discussed, sometimes accepted and often rejected, but never by means of attempts to create vast new edifices, dramatic changes. We see reasonably regular changes to their constitutions. Whereas in Canada we have developed this idea that we must always act as we did in 1982, with the constitutional package that changed our amending formula and introduced the Charter of Rights and so on, but also caused some other problems. As we know there are many Quebeckers who feel greatly dissatisfied with this arrangement and with the fact that their province and their legislature did not sign on to it.

As we did in the Meech Lake accord in 1987 through 1990 and as we did in the Charlottetown accord, attempts were made to create vast new changes, to essentially pull the system up by the roots to examine it and see if it is still growing. These other countries have acted in piecemeal manners and the result is they have gone further in changing and modernizing their constitutions than we have done.

Therefore, it is precedented. It speaks well that we are acting this way through our maturity as a country. It also reflects a part of our constitutional history that gets forgotten, and that is the fact that we actually have had successful piecemeal changes to our Constitution in recent years in areas that were for some mystical reason not seen as being part of a vast edifice.

I think of things like the Prince Edward Island bridge amendment. We had to amend the Constitution to allow a bridge to be constructed to Prince Edward Island. We had an amendment dealing with Newfoundland schools. We had an amendment to change the name of the province of Newfoundland to the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. We also had an amendment on the Quebec schools system that moved to a non-confessional system.

All these amendments have been done successfully, as were some others as well. They were all piecemeal and they all dealt with specific problems.

The attempt here, because we cannot deal through the Constitution, is to step aside, deal through a convention effectively with this law and thereby deal in the same spirit in the same way, which has brought success to our country and other countries, in order to achieve a mature bicameral democratic and, to a greater degree than ever before, a proportional system of democracy in the country.

I am excited by this. I think when the time comes in the future, all Canadians will look back at this move forward as one of the keystones in our country's democratic development.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will take this opportunity to address the question the member had for me in his preamble.

I recall speaking to Mr. Broadbent about the same committee meeting to which the member was referring. In fact, he remembers it quite differently. I guess I trust Mr. Broadbent's version of events and the fact that the member was filibustering because he did not want to engage in the question of citizen consultation. I will leave it to them to settle who walked out on whom and why.

The bottom line is we had an all party committee agree, and Parliament therefore adopted it, to a consultation. Sadly, the Liberal Party decided not to engage in it. It let the date of October come and go and that was the date the committee had set to have the citizen's consultation process engaged.

I have to ask the member this. I find it strange that he would want to have citizen's consultation and support this flim-flam sham of a consultation through the Frontier Institute, which calls people like Democracy Watch to get a couple of people to participate because it does not know how to do it.

Would the member not believe that Canadians, along with Parliament, are the ones who should be the ones to decide how this is done? Why is he so afraid of the Constitution? There is an amending formula simply because the Constitution is set up so parties like his cannot come up with what they decide is best and not go to Canadians. Does the member not understand the importance of the Constitution and that he should not treat it as a suggestion list? It is the rules and the foundation of any mature country.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am at a bit of a disadvantage in responding to what he says about my discussions with Mr. Broadbent because they have been in the context of an in camera committee, so I cannot provide any details. This also means that the hon. member could not have been there, notwithstanding his, I think, honestly mistaken assertion. He may have spoken to Mr. Broadbent, but that would mean that Mr. Broadbent broke the in camera convention in telling him what went on in committee.

If I could, Mr. Speaker, could I ask the hon. member to maybe be quiet during my speech, just the way I was during his comments? That would be a real treat.

I cannot respond to that, other than to say I am trying to respect the in camera convention. However, I can say that my position, which was reflected in the dissenting Conservative Party report at the time, was that there should be wider consultations, and Mr. Broadbent objected to it. That is very easy to look up in the relevant report, although we did support it.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have to rise on a point of order. The member is insinuating that there was some trust broken in an in camera meeting, when he was the one who brought it up. I plead to the member to apologize to Mr. Broadbent, through me. He brought up the whole subject. He is the one who is—

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

Order. The hon. member has made his point and unfortunately no one will have a chance to make any further points at this point, but we can resume the question and answer period after question period. Statements by members will now begin.

The House resumed from April 27 consideration of the motion that Bill C-43, An Act to provide for consultations with electors on their preferences for appointments to the Senate, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

When we last considered Bill C-43, there were six minutes left for questions and comments to the hon. member for Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington. I think he is ready to respond to a question from the hon. member for Ottawa Centre.

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

Mr. Speaker, it was not so much a question that the hon. member was putting forth as it was a comment. We had been engaged in a discussion much more heated than is normal between the hon. member and myself because we normally get on very well together. It was over the record of Mr. Broadbent, the former member for Ottawa Centre. I think the member misinterpreted me as being inappropriately disrespectful of Mr. Broadbent.

While I think it was a misinterpretation, I have no doubt that it was a sincere misinterpretation based on a legitimate desire to protect the reputation of a remarkable parliamentarian.

Therefore, I want to take the opportunity to say that while I had not intended to be disrespectful, if that misinterpretation was made, I understand it. However, I want to be clear that I was not being disrespectful. I have a very high regard for Mr. Broadbent, who disagrees with me on a number of issues, including some issues relating to the Senate, electoral reform and the whole democracy package, but who has these disagreements from a very sincere and principled point of view.

When my time ran out, I went over to the hon. member and indicated to him that I would make these comments when debate resumed. I want to ensure that is on the record.

The other thing I want to mention is there is nothing like having a week's break in the middle of a response. I did a little checking and it turned out that I had made an inaccurate statement regarding the minimum age at which people could serve in the Senate. I said it was 35. I am getting relatively advanced in years myself and we can make these slip-ups from time to time. Actually age 30 is the minimum age at which a person can serve in the Senate.

The point I was trying to make at that time, however, is still valid. The bill attempts to deal in a non-constitutional way with the issue of making the Senate more democratic. We have de facto elections referred to, as the Constitution requires, as consultations. We cannot change certain things about the Senate without a formal constitutional amendment, and one of those is the minimum age at which people can serve in the Senate, which is a provision that remains in place. This was the reason for bringing up the issue at that time.

By contrast, it would be possible for individuals to be elected under separate legislation, which is before the Senate right now, Bill S-4. It would make it possible for people to serve pass the age of 75 if the Senate itself ever made a decision to allow that constitutional amendment to go forward.

I point out that Bill S-4 has now been sitting before the Senate for almost a full year, despite the fact that it has only about 60 or 70 words.

Therefore, if I could take this opportunity to encourage the Senators to move a little more quickly than they have been doing in order to forward the cause of democracy in the Senate, I think they would be doing Canada a great service.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoy the interventions of the hon. member in the House, especially in the areas of his expertise. That is why I would like to ask him to enlighten the House. I know he has quite a background in constitutional affairs. In fact, I enjoyed a presentation by him the other day when we were at an electoral reform meeting.

The bill has come under attack by some constitutional experts who have suggested it is unconstitutional. Yet other constitutional experts have suggested it is? Could the member enlighten the general public on both sides of the view of the constitutionality of the bill?

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

Mr. Speaker, I do not mean to be difficult but was the hon. member referring to Bill S-4 or Bill C-43?

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Bill C-43.

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

I must admit that I have not been aware of any credible arguments that it is not constitutional. This legislation successfully attempts to skirt the constitution by limiting itself and by not actually calling for the election of senators, which would be democratic but not constitutional because it would violate the constitutionally enshrined principle that senators are appointed by the Governor General.

However, they are appointed, and this is a convention that has sprung up in Canada since Confederation, on the advice of the prime minister. Therefore, if the prime minister's advice is guided by the choice of voters choosing to make a recommendation under the Senate Appointment Consultations Act, that would be constitutionally permitted.

We do have two precedents for this. One is the recent announcement of the appointment of Bert Brown, who was elected through a consultative election in the province of Alberta, to the Senate. Nobody is contesting the constitutionality of that. The second one was the appointment a decade ago of Stan Waters to the Senate by the Governor General on the advice of Prime Minister Mulroney after being elected in a similar manner in the province of Alberta.

I think the constitutional scholarship would all be on one side that in fact this is entirely constitutional by acting as a piece of legislation and being truly advisory.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-43, An Act to provide for consultations with electors on their preferences for appointments to the Senate.

One of the reasons I am interested in being here today is that in a previous life I was parliamentary secretary to the minister responsible for democratic reform. I also sat with the previous hon. member on the procedure and House affairs committee where I had the opportunity to travel with Ed Broadbent to several countries in Europe to establish a process on how we could study democratic reform here in Canada. It, therefore, is something I am very interested in but I also feel that the bill could be entitled “how to fulfill your electoral promises while not engaging in any of the significant constitutional changes that you promised”.

Before going further, let us start by understanding what the Senate does. To function well, any independent state needs a system of checks and balances, mechanisms to ensure that all political decisions are in the best interests of the population and all citizens.

The Canadian Senate is our checks and balances. Senators are there to provide sober second thought on the work done by the House of Commons and, since senators are not subject to the vagaries of elections, they can track issues over a longer period of time than can members of Parliament. Canadian senators can contribute to indepth studies by Senate committees on public issues, such as health care in Canada, illegal drugs, deregulation of the Canadian airline industry and urban aboriginal youth.

Furthermore, the wide range of experience of Canadian senators, who include former Canadian provincial premiers, cabinet ministers, business people from many Canadian economic sectors and respected Canadians from all walks of life, provide substantial expertise to these investigations. Senators also represent regional, provincial and minority interests that tend to be overlooked in the House of Commons. Therefore, the Senate is like the watchdog of Canadian politics, but it is a lot more than that.

I will attest to that from my own personal experience. When I first came here as a member of Parliament some five years ago, at my first meeting of the northern western caucus I had an opportunity to meet Senators Dan Hays, Jack Austin and Jack Wiebe from Saskatchewan. I had the preconceptions that probably many Canadians have, that senators are not necessarily that useful and are not doing much of a job. However, after that first meeting with them, my whole concept of the Senate and the quality of the people completely changed.

What I found with the people I just named and those with whom we share the second House is that they have a huge passion for their regions and provinces. Members of Parliament obviously do but our knowledge is limited to our ridings. However, I do not believe we could find better people who have a better understanding and a better perception of what is going on in their province or region as a whole than those senators.

I would like to name a few people and talk about the actual work they have done on certain files. In Manitoba, for instance, Senator Carstairs is now one of the world authorities on palliative care. She is asked to speak everywhere in the world. I know she travels a lot and is asked to go all over Europe to speak on palliative care. It is very important for us to have people like her representing Canada. When she is out there, she is speaking on behalf of the Canadian Parliament and we are very proud of that.

I look at Mobina Jaffer and her fight for Darfur. It is extremely important to have Ms. Jaffer representing us on Darfur.

I think of Roméo Dallaire. Can anyone think of a better person to have in terms of someone who knows about genocide and about the tough areas in the world? He has been a wealth of information. His credibility on the world stage is second to none. Those are the kinds of people we have in the Senate who are providing leadership and advice to both Houses.

On the cultural side, we have people like Andrée Champagne and Viola Léger who have contributed incredibly on the cultural side. We also have Hugh Segal and Norm Atkins. I could go on forever. The quality of the people in the Senate is varied, it is solid and they make a very strong contribution to Parliament as a whole.

For decades, discussions have taken place and studies have been undertaken on the need to reform the Senate. Some have simply asked for the total abolition of the Senate, pleading that the Senate accomplishes nothing. The leader of the Reform Party, Preston Manning, campaigned for a triple E Senate: effective, equal and elected. Many asked for a better representation of British Columbia and Alberta in the Senate.

Canada has undergone many major demographic shifts since the 1970s and it is easy to understand why a major reform of the Senate is needed. However, let us face it, as we say, “If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen”. If the government is not willing to fully go ahead with a true, complete and real reform of the Senate, which requires wide consultation with the provinces and the ever perilous road to constitutional amendment, then it should not try to use smoke and mirrors to project the image that it does care about Senate reform, as it is trying to do with Bill C-43.

When I was referring to our study in Europe on democratic reform, my Conservative colleagues who were with me will certainly confirm that nobody thought we should be doing democratic reform on a piecemeal basis. Every country we visited told us that whatever we did we should ensure to analyze everything because by changing one thing we could affect another. That is extremely important to note and that is one of the reasons we think this legislation is not very serious.

Our government structure is based on the British parliamentary system and if we were to take one piece away, it would affect something else negatively. I am not sure all the repercussions have been examined and explored. We live in a very successful democracy right now. Our system does seem to be working fairly well. Is there a better democracy in the world than Canada? Someone would need to name them because I think we have been very successful over our last 125 to 130 years as a country.

The reality is that Bill C-43 contains no real reform for the Senate. The bill is full of flaws and has an extraordinarily high potential to create awkward, bizarre situations. Even from a Conservative partisan perspective, the bill is far less than what the Conservatives promised and it actually creates more problems than it solves.

Let us be frank. The Conservative government is not really seeking reform with Bill C-43. It simply wishes to keep an old Conservative promise made to its political base without taking the time to truly reform the Senate. Once again it is unfortunate that this government is putting its own election platform ahead of real reforms that would benefit all Canadians.

Once again it is a question of perception.

It reminds me of the Federal Accountability Act. The Conservatives have been talking about the accountability act as the best thing since sliced bread.

In fact, when we start looking at the details and we start at looking at what is going on within the accountability act, we are finding certain things. For instance, part of the backbone of the accountability act was the public appointments commission. It would be a commission with people and guidelines in place to make sure that when we nominated people to certain appointments, it would be a fair, just and transparent process. But in fact, literally hundreds of people have been named over the last little while and there is no public appointments commission yet.

When we ask the President of the Treasury Board why that is so, he will just say that it is a complicated issue and it takes time. But Canadians are not fooled by that. They know that the Conservatives need to bring in their 300, 400 or 500 Conservative crony appointments before they can do this. That is what is sad. It is all about smoke and mirrors when they do this kind of thing. But the Canadian public is getting wise and they are seeing that this accountability act is not real .

I think we are seeing similarities here with Bill C-43. The Conservatives always speak against the Senate, that the Senate is not effective, that it does not do its job. But in fact when it serves their purpose, all of a sudden the Senate is allowable. Mr. Fortier was brought in as a minister through the Senate and all of a sudden that is acceptable and that is okay. So, there are certainly some major double standards here.

Bill C-43 is about trying to deal with constitutional matters without touching the Constitution. It cannot be done, clearly. Bill C-43 will not do it. In fact, some might even question the constitutionality of this proposed bill. I know my colleague asked that exact question a few minutes ago. I am sure there are experts right now who are not sure if this bill is constitutional.

Even if Bill C-43 is adopted, the Prime Minister will have full power to appoint whoever he wants to the Senate, as we saw last week. The Prime Minister is already choosing senators based on public consultations, as he did last week by appointing Bert Brown. I know my colleague spoke to that a few minutes ago.

This is nothing new or revolutionary. Almost 20 years ago Brian Mulroney appointed Stan Waters based on the result of a public consultation in Alberta. So, clearly, there is nothing new in Bill C-43 and it is not what it is all hyped up to be.

With the adoption of Bill C-43, the government would consult the population with regard to Senate candidates, but it would not make these consultations binding, like true elections. There is always a condition there and that has a lot of people very upset. Again, it is about smoke and mirrors. It is about the perception that the Conservatives are making real changes but in the end the Prime Minister will have the final decision as to who gets named.

This means that if the Prime Minister disagrees with the winner of one of these Senate consultations, he could technically ignore the result and appoint whoever he wants. This is not how democracy works. This is not a true elected Senate. Even more troubling is that it could create awkward situations where an elected senator is not appointed to the Senate by the Prime Minister. But for the government it is about, again, smoke and mirrors, making people think that they are making meaningful change, but it is not reality.

Do not get me wrong. I fully support reforming Canada's Senate. But on this side of the House, we believe true Senate reform needs to reflect some public policy while respecting the Constitution. The Liberal Party believes in democratic reforms. We believe in concrete, complete and real democratic reforms. It is just unfortunate that Bill C-43 is not such a reform.

Once again, I refer the members to the study we did, I believe it was last year. Half of the procedure and House affairs committee travelled to Australia, I believe, and the other half to Europe. I was on the European trip. The advice we had from people who had done some major democratic reform was not to do it piecemeal. We were told to ensure that it is very comprehensive. I am very concerned. My Conservatives colleagues who were on that trip with us heard that as well and it seems to me that they are not listening to the advice that we received from a lot of experts.

If this government truly wants to reform the Senate, my party would be happy to collaborate and ensure a real and complete Senate reform is put forward. But true Senate reform needs to address a number of issues that are totally ignored by Bill C-43.

I believe the Senate needs to represent all provinces and territories and give a voice to those who do not have one. Regional representation is extremely important, but the process of electing senators, particularly in large provinces, would be unwieldy and would give unprecedented influence to large urban areas over small communities.

In the United States, senators such as Patrick Leahy of Vermont and the late Edmund Muskie of Maine have clearly shown how regional representation is important. Although they have come from tiny states, they have had a voice in the American senate.

Unfortunately, Bill C-43 totally ignores provincial and regional equity. It weakens the voice of provinces such as British Columbia and Alberta, as those two provinces currently have fewer senators than the population warrants. It seems that this would be a major concern to some of our current Conservative colleagues from western Canada.

Alberta and B.C. have been growing disproportionately and we now have an inequity when it comes to representation in the Senate. It seems to me that this is the kind of thing that should be included in any change that we make. We cannot just leave that aside and deal with one issue when the other one is brewing as well. That is what we are talking about when we say that we are not dealing with the whole issue.

Perhaps more troubling is the fact that no consultations with the provinces and territories were held prior to the introduction of Bill C-43. So far both the provinces of Ontario and Quebec have already come out against the idea of piecemeal Senate reform and so did Yukon. I am sure that is why my hon. colleague from Yukon is here sitting beside me. He wants to make sure that his territory is well represented in the bill.

When the government does not have the approval of Ontario and Quebec, those are substantially big provinces that are missing. When such considerable changes are being contemplated to the way that Parliament functions, we would think that there would be a buy-in from the big players. Actually, the government should have it from all the players, if possible, but when Quebec and Ontario say that they do not agree, then the government has a problem.

In addition, provincial Senate elections would be very detrimental to candidates from minority groups. The issue is very important and particularly disturbing for Manitoba. My province has a large number of anglophones and francophones are a very small minority. If senators are elected for the entire province, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for Franco-Manitoban senate candidates to get elected. It will be almost impossible, given their numbers, to get an Acadian senator elected in Nova Scotia, for example, or in Alberta.

Since Confederation, Manitoba has had a francophone senator. For the Franco-Manitoban community, this has been vital. There is usually only one francophone MP and rarely are there two. There is usually one francophone MP serving all of western Canada. At present, we also have Senator Chaput from Manitoba and Senator Tardif from Edmonton. These additional representatives are of extraordinary assistance in supporting the efforts of francophone communities and francophone MPs from the west, who are attempting to support all their fellow citizens but who nevertheless have large francophone communities in their ridings.

I am thinking of Gildas Molgat, former Speaker of the Senate. He was one of the longest-serving Speakers of the Senate, and an extraordinary person. His term was renewed. I think he was the only person who served two terms, but I am not positive. He was well respected by all his colleague in both Houses. Mr. Molgat came from the small town of Sainte-Rose-du-Lac. With a small francophone minority, it would have been very surprising for him to have been elected. We believe that we would lose out on having people like Gildas Molgat.

I would like to come back to Claudette Tardif, former rector of Campus Saint-Jean and a invaluable asset to the Senate. If the Senate wants to really fulfil its mission and represent all regions of the country and all communities, all Canadians and official language minority communities must be represented in the Senate. The situation is not exclusive to the country's francophones. It would also be the case for the Métis, aboriginals and representatives of cultural communities, not to mention people from rural areas, who, statistically speaking, have fewer candidates in elections.

Senators from the Northwest Territories and Yukon sit on our northern and western caucus. They represent their region and represent, for example, the interests of Inuit, aboriginal, first nations and Métis people. If we had an elected Senate, these elements could disappear, and this is very worrisome. I think going from the current Senate—which is regional and representative of Canada's cultural diversity—to a more or less male and homogenous Senate, as the House of Commons now is unfortunately, would not necessarily be a step forward.

As for limits to senators' terms, I support maximum non-renewable terms. This would still enable the Senate to benefit from the wisdom and experience of seasoned senators while ensuring a good flow of new ideas and vision from newly elected senators.

There are many flaws in the bill and important items completely left out from Bill C-43. In some, the question we must address today is how to reform the Senate.

The Conservatives are proposing a piecemeal deal that will actually aggravate the problem of potential deadlock between the two houses of Parliament while increasing partisanship in the Senate. I really do not think they thought this scenario through.

On our side of the House in my party what we want and what we stand for is real Senate reform that would consider a wide number of critical issues: first, selection process and term; second, mandate; and third, fair distribution. We support Senate reform that would actually resolve problems instead of creating new ones. We support a reform that would better Canadian politics, not create deadlock between the House and the Senate.

This Prime Minister thrives on division and discord, not unity and harmony. This is but another example of that. Once again, the government is standing up for a partisan perception and image, rather than for a fairer and better Canada for all its citizens.

Unfortunately, Bill C-43 is just one more example of the government spending months taking its right-wing base of support for granted, and then trying to please it to keep it on its side.

Before tabling an act to provide for consultation with electors on their preferences for appointments to the Senate, I suggest the government consult with the provinces on their preferences for Senate reforms. Perhaps this way we could see the Conservatives introduce real, concrete and complete Senate reform, rather than the piecemeal bill we have before us with Bill C-43.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague. That was a very good speech, informative with some very good points.

I agree with him on the general thrust, which may come as a surprise to some, that the government is one that likes to bash the Senate, that likes to say the Senate does not have any role, and it brings back and forth into the House things that the Conservatives think brings the Senate into disrepute, yet are quite happy to use the Senate when they want to.

The appointment of Mr. Fortier to the Senate just after the last election being obviously a case in point. The Conservatives said they needed this guy. He did not run. He did not want to inconvenience himself to run, but wanted to be in the Senate and take that position, so they did that.

The government leader in the Senate, Senator LeBreton, is one of the chief attack dogs on issues. She is often out in the media talking about issues and occasionally making up stuff. That is how the Conservatives use the Senate on occasion. I think that is kind of wrong.

One of the things I found out when I came here, and I will be very honest, was that most Canadians do not know that actually there is some very good work done at the Senate. Anybody who has seen the Kirby report on health care or more recently on mental health, that is incredibly valuable work. The work the Senate has done on defence, for example, and the report on CIDA about international assistance is some great work.

I may be a little partial. I have a great senator, Senator Cordy, who comes from my community of Dartmouth.

I have had a lot of discussions with people about the Senate. Like my colleague, I am very open to reforms to the Senate that make sense, that take into account consultations.

The province of New Brunswick has also indicated that it does not want to go along with this kind of piecemeal, ad hoc approach to Senate reform.

My colleague talked about minority populations and how this might impact them. I am not sure if he mentioned Nova Scotia, but if he did, I would like to ask him what the implications might be for piecemeal Senate reform on a francophone population, a minority population. We have had francophone senators from Nova Scotia. It is very possible we might not if reform of the Senate goes on as the government might see it. I would like to ask him his view on what might happen in a province like Nova Scotia.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's remarks. I did mention Nova Scotia. What I said was that it would be virtually impossible for a person in a minority situation like Nova Scotia's or Manitoba's or anywhere in western Canada to get elected from an official languages community, a minority community. It would be extremely difficult.

What if we did not have these people representing the interests of these smaller communities? In Manitoba, for instance, the francophone community is about 4% of the population; we are not talking about 20%, 30% or 33% like we are in New Brunswick. Provinces like Nova Scotia and Manitoba are down to 3%, 4% and 5%. To have those people there--and not only representing one's interest because they are there for more than that--means that they understand the dynamics of the communities out there, and it is important to have them there.

Under this new proposal, it basically would be whoever wins the majority. I am thinking of our colleagues from Nunavut, who come to our weekly meetings and talk to us about their issues with fishing and with guns, for instance, and all the issues specific to their communities, such as poverty and housing. I think of how invaluable that is to our caucuses, not only on a minority basis but I think on a reasonable basis as well.

There are people such as Senator Dan Hays, who was phenomenal. We were very sad to lose Mr. Hays and also to lose Jack Austin, who left just lately. They were a wealth of information. They were very bright people. Whether they came from a Liberal, a Conservative or other background, I still think they contributed to all of Canada. They did not come in there with this blurred vision. We have some very good Conservative Senators as well, such as Hugh Segal, who bring some very thoughtful ideas forward with the work they do in the Senate. I think it would be very sad for Canada and it would be a bad day for Canada for us to lose the prospect of such talent.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, while I thank the hon. member from Manitoba for his intervention, unfortunately what I am hearing from over there again is more Liberal talk about reforming the Senate but no action.

Finally we have a bill before us that is going to play a critical role in changing the whole process in the Senate to one of actually having a democratized system to appoint senators. I think that is great for Canadians. They are going to have people who are finally going to be accountable for the actions they take.

The hon. member mentioned a few senators who are doing great work. He mentioned Senator Hugh Segal. Senator Segal has said that he will be the first senator to run in an upcoming Senate election. He is prepared to take that next step because he believes in having an elected Senate. I think that is just fabulous. He raises some concerns about having minority and official language representation from smaller populations in western Canada, but I know for a fact that we do have that type of representation today in an elected House of Commons. If we can get that type of representation in an elected House of Commons, I have no idea why it would not happen in an elected Senate.

I want to add my voice in support of this great legislation. I would hope that the Liberals will decide this is something they should support because it is the right thing to do.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Mr. Speaker, in regard to my colleague's comments, the first thing I would like to respond to is that the member speaks to this being a democratic process. In fact, it is not. The government is consulting with people. They can get elected, but the Prime Minister has discretion on whether or not he wants to name those people. There is a little gap there.

Second, I am not sure that the Conservatives have thought about the consequences of having two elected Houses. It is complicated already. I do not know if they have thought about this, but there is no dispute resolution mechanism here to resolve issues between the two Houses. I can see bills taking absolutely forever.

This is the problem when the government starts bringing stuff forward in a piecemeal way. Over the last several months, we have seen what happens when the government, in order to please the public, tries to rush decisions forward that have not been thought through. The income trusts decision is the best example that can be used. It is the biggest scandal in Canadian history, with $25 billion lost in one day, mostly by seniors, with 1.5 million seniors affected by this.

Third, the government brought in interest deductibility. Again it was done in a rush because the government thought this might be popular with Canadians, but it did not think about the consequences. That is what this is all about with this legislation. We know what has happened lately. We have lost $9 billion in Canadian corporations to foreign ownership because of interest deductibility and the income trust taxation. Companies from overseas are buying devalued Canadian companies. It has cost Canada $9 billion. Lately sixteen income trusts have been sold for $9 billion. That is absolutely unacceptable.

That is what happens when things are done piecemeal and when government thinks something might be attractive to the Canadian public but in fact does not think of the long term consequences. We now have BCE on the block, a Canadian company that OMERS is trying to purchase while competing with American interests. The American interests can write off the interest on their loan to purchase BCE, but OMERS cannot. The American interests then have a 37%--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Selkirk—Interlake is rising on a point of order.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, we are here to debate Senate reform. The hon. member is talking about issues of the day and about our budget, which have absolutely nothing to do with the--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

I thank the hon. member for Selkirk—Interlake. I will recognize the hon. member for Kelowna—Lake Country to ask a short question, to which I am sure the hon. member for Saint Boniface will be happy to respond.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to add a little to my colleague's comments and concerns about the statement of the member opposite that this is all smoke and mirrors. If anything, for the previous 13 years we have seen smoke and mirrors in the hot air from the member's government, the hot air that has been increasing the climate change and the greenhouse gases in our country.

The government of the member opposite had 13 years to implement democratic reform. If the member feels so passionately about concrete democratic reform, why did he not do anything?

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to return to my hon. colleague's comment because what I was saying was in fact very relevant. When one makes hasty decisions, one pays a political price for them. We are selling out our Canadian companies to foreign ownership. That is what happens when decisions are made that are not based on proper analysis. That is exactly what is happening here.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, it is a very great pleasure for me to stand in this place today to speak in favour of Bill C-43 on Senate consultations.

Let me say at the outset that this is only one bill in a suite of legislation that the government has been bringing forward on democratic reform.

We have seen Bill C-16, which is a bill to set fixed dates for elections. It received royal assent just recently and will come into effect. It states, of course, that outside of a non-confidence vote, which may bring the government down at any time, the next election will be held on the third Monday in October 2009. It is a very important piece of democratic reform that is overwhelmingly supported by Canadians.

We also have Bill C-31, which is currently in the Senate. It is moving its way along through committee. It deals with voter integrity and trying to eliminate voter fraud. I am quite confident that this bill will receive royal assent before the House rises for the summer.

However, we also have another bill in the Senate, Bill S-4. We have spoken many times on many occasions in this place about Bill S-4, but I have to say that frankly I cannot fathom why this bill has taken as long as it has in the Senate. For the benefit of those Canadians who may be listening, Bill S-4 is a 66-word bill that has been before the Liberal-dominated and unelected Senate for close to one year now. In fact, May 30 will see the one year anniversary of the bill being before the Senate.

This is a 66-word bill that has been there for close to 12 months. By my rough math, that is a little over five words per month that these primarily Liberal senators have been examining in regard to the bill. All this says to me is that either the bill contains some really big words or there is a second agenda at hand, and that agenda is that the Liberal senators do not want to see Senate reform. They do not want to see Bill S-4 pass.

I have examined the bill and I can assure members that the words are not so big such that it would take five words per month to examine the bill, so I have to go to my second assumption, that is, the Liberal senators truly do not want to see any real and effective Senate reform. Why else would they keep a bill that is so short, so succinct, so precise and so to the point locked up in the Senate for close to a year?

If nothing else, that bill in itself speaks to why we need Senate reform. It speaks to why we need a bill like Bill C-43, which allows the process to be taken away from the prime minister of the day in regard to the appointment of his hacks and flacks to the Senate and allows individual Canadians to express an opinion on who they would like to see represent their region or province in the Senate.

I can think of no greater example than the travesty of Bill S-4 for supporting this bill, yet I hear nothing but opposition from members of the official opposition party, members of the New Democratic Party and members of the Bloc Québécois, who are saying they will not support Bill C-43, consultations that in effect would allow a prime minister to listen to Canadians before he or she makes an appointment to the Senate.

If we truly believe in accountability then we must support Bill C-43, yet I hear nothing but opposition from members opposite, and again, that confuses me. On the one hand I hear members opposite talk about the need for Senate reform, for accountability and for regional representation, yet I hear nothing but opposition to a very good piece of legislation that we have put before the House for discussion and debate.

Bill C-43 deals with a very important conception of ours, which is that all members, whether in this place or the other place, should be accountable. There is only one way to deal with true accountability. That is to allow the individual citizens of this great country of ours to have a say in who represents them so that in fact the representatives then would be accountable to the citizens rather than those who appointed them.

That is the essence of Bill C-43. It is to allow consultations to take place at a provincial or a territorial level. Those consultations, in which the will of the people would be expressed, then would allow the prime minister of the day to appoint the individual to the Senate. In other words, it does not in any way take away from the constitutionality that has been in question from time to time during this debate. In fact, it accommodates the Constitution.

I take some difference of opinion with my hon. colleague the deputy House leader who said that the bill would allow us to skirt the Constitution. I do not like that choice of language. I choose to say that the bill would allow us to accommodate the provisions contained within the current Constitution, and those provisions say that only the Governor General can appoint members to the Senate. The current convention is that the Governor General, before making that appointment, would take advice from the prime minister of the day, and only the prime minister. That would still be in effect. Therefore, the constitutionality argument is really mute.

The prime minister would still appoint senators to the upper house, but only after the prime minister listened to the expressed will, through a consultation process, of the citizens in various provinces, territories and regions. What could be fairer and more transparent than that? What could be more accountable than that?

We on this side of the House say that we have to get away from the process that has occurred for the last 100 years where, for strictly partisan reasons, members of the upper house have been appointed. In all fairness, we have seen time and time again appointments made on a partisan level regardless of political affiliation and regardless of which party happens to be in government of the day.

We have seen time after time Liberal prime ministers appoint Liberal senators for no other reason than the fact that the person has been a good, loyal political partisan soldier to the Liberal Party. We have also seen that happen when Conservative governments have been in power. Conservative governments have appointed Conservative senators because of their loyalty and partisanship to the government of the day. My point is that should not be allowed to happen because there really is no accountability to the people. There is only accountability to the party of the day, or the prime minister who made the appointment.

We need to get away from that method of appointing senators. We have to allow Canadian citizens a voice in who they wish to see represent them in the Senate.

The bill deals with that in a very precise, succinct and fair manner. Consultations would be taken during federal elections at the provincial level. Should the citizens of a particular province decide they wished to see a certain individual represent them in the Senate, that would allow the prime minister to advise the Governor General of his will to appoint that person.

We do not have a constitutional argument here. We have a fairness argument, and it absolutely works.

Many times we have seen appointments made to the Senate which, under normal circumstances by anyone's standards, would not be considered to be fair and would not be considered to be representative of the people of that province. I want to draw to the House's attention only a couple of those examples.

In my opinion one of the most egregious uses of this appointment process happened with a current senator by the name of Art Eggleton, a former mayor of Toronto, a former Liberal member of Parliament and a former Liberal cabinet minister. Most Canadians will recall the disgrace in which Mr. Eggleton was dismissed from cabinet. He was found guilty of awarding untendered contracts to one of his former girlfriends. What was his reward? His reward was an appointment to the Senate. That, under normal circumstances, would never happen.

I am sure if we took a look at some of the other names of current senators in the upper chamber, we would find that the reason those people were appointed was because of the loyalty they exhibited to the party. They were appointed not because they were deserving of representing the people, but only because they curried favour with the prime minister of the day or the government of the day.

[Blair Wilson, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

What about Fortier?

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

This is what I find really interesting. Whenever we have this debate, we hear nothing but chirping from the other side because we touch a nerve. The Liberals know what I am saying is right but they just do not like it. They do not like to hear the words which exhibit the type of favouritism and patronage they exhibited during the many years they were in government.

Again, I go back to the fact that if they truly believe what they are saying about accountability and democratic reform, why can they not support a bill such as Bill C-43? It is the height of hypocrisy and sanctimony. They say on one hand that they want democratic reform, but that they do not like this. They like the current system where they can appoint their friends to the Senate. It comes down to that.

Senator Jim Munson, who was the former director of communications to Prime Minister Chrétien, was appointed. Why? I suggest because he was a loyal soldier to Prime Minister Chrétien and was rewarded, when Prime Minister Chrétien left office, by getting an appointment to the Senate. Francis Fox is another example. There are many. It should not be allowed to happen. What is the problem with allowing individual citizens to comment on who they would like to represent them in the Senate?

I also want to point out that this concept of having the people engage in a consultation process before senators are appointed is widely supported by Canadians across Canada. There will be some, such as our friends in the NDP, who do not want a Senate at all. They want the Senate abolished. Therefore, they would not support a bill of this sort.

Some years ago I would probably have put myself in the category of those who wanted the Senate done away with. I did not really see the need for a Senate at all times or at any time. I have since changed my view on that. Since I have been in this place, I have seen, from time to time, the upper chamber actually perform the service it is intended to perform, and that is to be the voice of reason or the voice of sober second thought.

From time to time, pieces of legislation have gone from this place to the upper chamber and brought back with meaningful, realistic and important amendments that make a bill stronger. That is an important function. However, what I cannot abide by are bills like Bill S-4, which would purport to put a term limit on senators, unduly and purposely delayed, obstructed by the unelected senators in the upper chamber simply because they do not want the system to change.

It has been said in the House before that under the current system senators can serve their terms for up to 45 years. They can be appointed at age 30 and serve, as it stands now, until age 75. Bill S-4 would set a term limit of eight years so any senator, after being appointed, would only serve for a term of eight years.

I understand that the leader of the official opposition has taken several positions on this bill. I understand he supports it in theory. He has said from time to time that he supports terms limits anywhere from six to eight, to ten to twelve, to fourteen or fifteen years. I do not know what is going to happen when the Senate finally gets around to dealing with the bill. Regardless, it is one step in Senate reform to have term limits set upon senators who are appointed to that place.

This is another important step because it allows individuals to comment and express their opinions on who they wish as their appointed representatives. What could be fairer?

We have a democratic system in our country right now where all members of this place are elected. Would anyone suggest that we go away from that system and have members of Parliament appointed? Of course not, it makes absolutely no sense. One of the basic tenets of our democracy is the fact that elected representatives are just that: elected by the people they represent. Yet in the Senate, it is just the opposite.

We have senators in my province of Saskatchewan and in Ontario and in every province who are supposedly there to represent the people of those provinces, but were not elected by the citizens of those provinces. Where is the fairness in that? Where is the accountability? I would suggest there is none.

The bill would address that flaw in the current system. It would allow individuals across the country to cast a vote, to voice their opinion on who they wished to see as their senator in their region. Who can argue with that basic tenet?

Apparently Liberals can because they are voicing their opinion today in this debate. I certainly suspect that when it comes time for the bill to be voted upon, they will voice their opinion by voting against the bill, but I cannot understand why. How can they say they are in favour of democracy and then vote against the system that would allow democracy to take place?

There are a few aspects of the bill that are worth noting as well. The first one is the method in which voting would take place during the consultation process. Currently, as everyone here knows, to be elected as a member of Parliament, we go through the first past the post electoral system. In a federal election in our home ridings, if we get more votes than any of our opponents, regardless of the percentage of that vote, we will be elected to this place.

When I was first elected in 2004, I was elected with receiving just above 33% of the vote. I won by 122 votes. This means at that time roughly 67% of the people in my riding did not want me to be their representative, but they got me anyway. In the second election luckily I was able to increase that amount to about 43% or 44%, but it still was not the majority. The majority of people in my riding voted for someone else. We suspect that even though this system seems to have worked well over time for the members of Parliament, we should enact a different voting system for those people who cast ballots on the consultation process for senators. Why? For a couple of reasons.

The primary reason is if we had the same voting system for electing members of Parliament, the first past the post system, we might end up with the same results. I am not saying that is necessarily a bad thing. What I am saying is if we had a different system of voting, it might be able to properly reflect the wishes of the majority of people in that region who are expressing an opinion.

Therefore, contained in Bill C-43 we have a provision that would allow for preferential voting, or at least a preferential voting system, the single transferrable ballot, to elect members.

How that works very simply is this. There may be a number of candidates who are putting their names forward for senators. The individuals who wish to express their opinion cast ballots marking their preference, either one, two or three. If there were three candidates, they would mark their first choice, second choice and third choice. If there is no majority on the first ballot, in other words if none of the candidates receive over 50% of first ballot support, we would then go to a system where we start counting the second ballots and add that to the total.

At the end of the day, those people who were selected or at least elected at the consultation level would have at minimum 50% plus one vote of all those who cast ballots. By the time the prime minister got around to appointing the individual to the Senate, he or she could be absolutely assured that the individual had the majority of support of the people within their province.

We do not have this system in the lower House, but it is one that I believe is a very necessary and a very democratic method. That is why I believe this bill, through all the various aspects of the bill, is something we should support. Again, it allows for accountability. It allows for the senators, who are appointed, to be accountable to the people who cast ballots for them, rather than being appointed just because of who they know in the PMO. It also ensures that we have some democratic rights at the provincial and territorial level. Finally, it allows the assurances of the prime minister that the majority of people in the province actually voted for and wanted the senator who ultimately becomes appointed.

I look forward to taking questions from the members of the opposition.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the hon. member's presentation. He seems to be very much in favour of the consistent application of certain principles. This raises a couple of questions.

Why did he single out only senators appointed by Liberal governments and leave aside the most egregious appointment that has been seen in decades? That would be the appointment of the public works and government services minister, who refuses to run in an election in Montreal. Every time a seat opens up, he refuses squarely to run for election. I would like to hear the hon. member's opinion about that.

If the member is in favour of consistency, I wonder if he would go a step further and argue for what exists in the United States, that judges should be elected as well. If he is in favour of consistency, why would he not be in favour of the same election rules for the Senate and the House of Commons?

If he believes in accountability, I would like to know what he thinks about the arguments put forth by those who believe in proportional representation, that it is a more democratic system than the first past the post system.

I would like to raise a hypothetical situation. Let us suppose that the Prime Minister went to a system where he only appoints senators who have been elected. If a province decided not to play by those rules for whatever legitimate reason it might have, and there were retirements of senators from that province, but the Prime Minister would not appoint senators unless they were elected, and the provincial government would not go to elections, that would mean that province would be underrepresented in the Senate. What does the hon. member think about that?

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I find myself smiling every time I hear a member from the opposition raise some of these concerns because they have no credence whatsoever.

Let me deal with the last point first. The bill contains a provision that Senate consultation would take place at the same time as a federal election. Provinces would be consulted should they wish to engage in their own consultations during provincial elections. This is a federal House, so those provisions are taken care of. For the member to suggest it is not accountable and not democratic is sheer folly because it is.

I want to get back to the member's first point where he said it was the most egregious appointment ever. I would take great umbrage at that when he is speaking of Senator Fortier because as the Prime Minister stated at the time of the appointment, the reason he appointed Senator Fortier to the Senate was he wished to have him in cabinet representing the city of Montreal, the second largest city in Canada. He also stated at that time, and this is something that the members of the opposition conveniently forget, that the appointment is not until age 75. It is until the next election. That is it.

When the Liberals appointed senators, until 1965 they were there for life and now they are there until age 75. That is not the case here. For the member to talk about the most egregious case of appointments in Canadian parliamentary history is absolutely out of the question. It is not true.

I look forward to more questions because again, I have not had this much fun listening to questions in a long, long time.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am wondering if the parliamentary secretary and the Conservative government have an open mind about the possibility of some kind of proportional representation coming into effect some day when it comes to the selection of senators. Why did they choose to initiate this process without any kind of broad consultation?

Why would the Conservatives choose a research firm like the Frontier Centre which has a stated bias against proportional representation? It is on the record years ago saying that proportional representation is a bad idea. This indicates to me that perhaps there is a preconceived bias on the part of the Tories that they would seek out and find the one polling firm that is so jaded and biased toward proportional representation that they are willing to risk their objectivity by saying so and giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to have these tiny little focus groups and then base a conclusion on that. Does that not speak to a prejudice against meaningful reform and proportional representation?

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Winnipeg Centre for his question, which was not on Senate reform, but was on proportional representation.

I have answered this question in this place many times before. He speaks to the consultation process that this government has engaged in, on trying to find more avenues for democratic reform, but when he criticizes the method in which we have engaged in this consultation process, he forgets one very important fact. At the procedure and House affairs committee, this government, not the NDP nor the Liberals, proposed a motion to allow members of the committee to go through a consultation process Canada wide. Every individual party in this House would have been represented by its members who would go forward as a committee and engage Canadians in the consultation on democratic reform, which I am sure would have included proportional representation.

What happened when we proposed this motion at the committee level? The NDP voted against it. The member for Ottawa Centre voted against it. Had members voted in favour of this consultation process, we would have been engaged in that process right now. Perhaps the member for Winnipeg Centre might have been his party's representative. For some reason, the New Democratic Party voted against a motion which would have allowed the procedure and House affairs committee to engage in democratic reform consultations across Canada.

The member has no credibility when it comes to asking a question about why we may have a bias. The very actions of those members showed that they clearly have a bias themselves.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, unlike the last two speakers who gave five problems with this bill that were not really answered, I want to compliment the member on saying that he recognizes that the Senate is a body of sober second thought and provides reasoned additional input into bills. In fact he made the very important factual point that a substantial number of bills have been amended and improved by the Senate.

I would like the member to follow up on the good work he did in his opening speech and outline some of those positive changes that the Senate has made to bills.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I should correct myself. In response to the intervention from my colleague from Winnipeg Centre, I said that at committee the member for Ottawa Centre voted against the motion put forward by the Conservatives. It was, I believe, the member for Acadie—Bathurst who voted against it, but nonetheless, it still was an NDP member on the committee who voted against consultations by the committee itself.

With respect to the question of my hon. colleague from Yukon, there are a number of examples, some minor and some fairly major, where senators, after examining a bill that has gone from our place to their place, have come forward with amendments that have strengthened the bill. Sometimes those amendments were technical in nature. Perhaps the wording was slightly flawed. Sometimes they were more substantive.

My point is simply this. If the Senate was doing the job that it purports to do, if it was doing the job that we all want it to do, it would examine legislation coming from this place in a non-partisan manner to see if they could strengthen it.

The purpose of the Senate is not to obstruct legislation, but to examine it for weaknesses and to recommend positive changes. Yet what we see time and time again, by the very nature of senators being unelected and therefore unaccountable, is that they are not looking for ways to strengthen a bill, they are looking for ways in which to obstruct a bill. Again I go back to Bill S-4, a bill that has been before the Senate for close to a year. It is a 66 word bill, yet it has been there for close to a year and there is no end in sight.

That is because, in my view at least, the Liberal senators wish to obstruct this bill. They do not want to see it go forward, despite the views of the majority of members in this place. They are using the powers they have to obstruct legislation when in fact they should be doing just the opposite. They should be looking for ways in which to pass legislation as quickly and as swiftly as they can, while all the time ensuring that the legislation is properly formatted.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak to Bill C-43, An Act to provide for consultations with electors on their preferences for appointments to the Senate.

First, I want to comment on a couple of things. I want to congratulate the Senate for its work on bills as was just mentioned. A bill, no matter how short, can be bad and should be improved and dealt with. The senators should not be bullied into pushing forward a bad bill. I congratulate the senators for their work.

A Conservative member asked about democratic reform in the previous government. The point was made that during the previous government the biggest changes perhaps in history, but at least in modern history, were made to advance democratic reform in the House of Commons. Great credit has to go to the member for LaSalle—Émard who made those changes. I will mention three of them.

First was the increased funding for the Library of Parliament to help members of Parliament to have substantial research input into bills.

Second was the election of committee chairs. This might have emanated from the opposition, but the last government brought it forward. It is distressing that the new government has taken a backward step in democratic reform by revoking that, at least within its party in not allowing elected committee chairs. The democratization of that process was done by the member for LaSalle—Émard.

Probably the greatest reform that really changed the dynamics of the House at the time was the bringing in of the three line whip. It allowed members to take their own positions on a large number of items, confidence motions as they always were, budgets, throne speeches, these types of bills, on which the government has a position. Unfortunately, we have not seen that recently from the government side, but we have certainly seen that democratization on this side of the House with significant input for members to represent their ridings.

Now I would like to get back to Bill C-43. As has been clear on this side of the House, I and other members are definitely in favour of appropriate, rational and comprehensive Senate reform. That is not the issue. Once again, if there is a bad bill, one that does not do the job, obviously we have to either amend it or defeat it.

I am not sure what the Conservative member who was complaining about the stalling of bills has to say about this, but it is surprising that this bill was tabled four months ago and it is only now before us. Why was it sitting around when it could have been brought forward a lot earlier?

The Liberal position is to have full scale comprehensive Senate reform. If we are to reform a body that is complex and which interacts in the legislative process with other bodies, obviously we have to put it all together for it to make sense. When a Ford truck is broken, we do not drop in a Volkswagen engine and assume it will fit and that the truck will start. It will not fit. It is air cooled. We will burn the engine out. We cannot try to make a change to one part.

In this particular case, it is not a change that will be effective. We should not try to make a change which would make the whole system fall apart. It would create more problems than if we looked at the whole situation and how all the parts are interrelated. I will give some examples later in my speech that outline how the different parts of the system would be negatively affected by tinkering with one part without considering the ramifications on the other parts.

It is astonishing that the Conservatives would put forward a bill that would hurt Alberta and British Columbia so much, that would decrease their representation in Canadian affairs. I am sure some Conservative members did not realize this because the individual members did not write the bill, but it is still a fact. We would never, on this side of the House at least, approve a bill that would hurt Alberta and British Columbia so much without making the appropriate adjustments to make sure they were represented.

Some references were made in previous speeches to the Law Reform Commission. This commission did a remarkable study on electoral reform and I will quote from Hansard what was said about the report. One would hope that any bill on electoral reform would look at that expert information and refer to it.

It was stated in Hansard:

The report is perhaps the finest treatment of the question of electoral reform in a modern democracy that has ever been written.

When the official opposition critic asked if any members of the government had read this report, not one member stood. If would seem that if we were designing a bill, we would look at all the intelligence available, especially at the best report ever written. Hopefully, before this debate is over, a Conservative member will stand and say that he or she has read that report and, more important, that it had an effect on this bill before us that has been criticized so much.

Can anyone imagine having the Law Commission of Canada Act, an act of Parliament, disrespected by the government? There are statutory responsibilities under that act to perform services for Canadians. By law, the government must do things for Canadians but the zero funding in the budget is very questionable in relation to the proper functioning of democracy.

Another issue that has been raised in the debate about the bill is, as the deputy House leader from the Conservatives said, that it skirts constitutionality. It may be constitutional and it may not. If the bill gets to committee, we will certainly want to hear from experts on both sides of that issue, to be fair, as to whether changing one piece of a complex system would be constitutional. As all members of the House know, there are certain changes to the Senate that cannot be made in this manner or by simply bringing a bill before the House of Commons.

The other major point is that the bill would not do anything. What would it achieve? The prime minister can already appoint members. In fact, this morning one of the opposition members, in response to a question, made the point that in 1998 Prime Minister Mulroney appointed Stan Waters.

I think westerners would probably be appalled if they knew that the prime minister would not need to follow the results of these elections. If westerners elect someone the prime minister does not like, he would not need to make that appointment. The decision would still be up to him.

Let us be frank: the Conservative government does not really want to change Bill C-43. It just wants to keep an old Conservative promise to its electoral base without really taking the time to reform the Senate. Once again, it is a shame that this government is pursuing its own political agenda at the expense of real reforms that would benefit all Canadians.

I now want to try solving the perplexing question as to why the government would put forward a bill that, as I have outlined, does not change anything and, were it to change anything, it would cause all sorts of other problems.

The reason that has been hypothesized by a number of speakers so far is that the government is trying to appease its western Conservative base which it has upset so much. People might ask why the Conservatives are angry and why they are hastily bringing forward a bill with, as people have outlined, all the flaws to appease that base.

The first reason is that right after the election the Prime Minister appointed Senator Fortier after saying that all appointments would be made on merit. This came as quite a shock to Conservatives across the country but they gave them a second chance. However, it did not last very long.

The second reason is that after speaking adamantly against floor crossing while in opposition and after 40 Conservative members voted against floor crossing in a bill, the Prime Minister appointed a Liberal as a minister before a number of Conservatives who had worked hard for the party. I am delighted that we have a Liberal in cabinet but I think a number of Conservatives were upset about that appointment.

The third reason is the fact that the government has become a huge spender. After telling people for years and ranting against the NDP and others who would spend a lot of money, the Conservatives brought in the biggest spending budget in history.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

What does this have to do with Bill C-43?

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

It was three times the rate of inflation. After talking about cutting program spending--

[Blair Wilson, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Tax and spend Conservatives.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

We cut taxes.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

--it was tax and spend, much to the shock of those Conservatives across the country--

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. It is becoming increasingly difficult to hear the hon. member for Yukon. I will ask all members to hold off until questions and comments and then they can ask questions if they have any.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, but I do not mind if I am upsetting the Conservatives so much about the bad things they have done that they need to respond.

The Conservatives were yelling that they have cut taxes. I have before me a federal tax return that Canadians have recently filled out. I will go to the tax return that Canadians filled out last year. On the first $35,595, in nice red letters here, what did all Canadians pay in income tax, especially poor Canadians? It was 15% on income tax. In schedule 1 of this year's federal tax return, on $36,378 the rate is 15.25%. The federal income tax basic rate has increased.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The hon. member was quoting from a document and I would like him to table it.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member for Selkirk—Interlake has asked the member to table a document from which he was quoting but that actually only applies to ministers. The member would need to seek the unanimous consent of the House to allow the member for Yukon to table the document.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[Merv Tweed]

The Liberals deny democracy again.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. Let us hold off until the questions and comments period. If members from any party have questions or comments they would like to make about the member's speech, they can do so at that time. Until then let him finish.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, the fourth reason the Conservatives have upset Conservative voters is for this poorly thought out bill that does nothing for the Senate. Another reason is the Conservatives' flip-flop on income trusts.

Before the election, the Prime Minister said that to tax the income trusts would be an attack on the savings of the seniors of Canada. On page 33 of the Conservative platform it says “preserve income trusts by not”--

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Blackstrap, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order to ask what we are debating. We are supposed to be debating Bill C-43. Have we changed the debate since I came into the House?

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Is the hon. member making a point about relevance?

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Blackstrap, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I want to know how he got on this topic.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I would remind the hon. member for Yukon to keep his remarks as close as possible to the subject matter of the bill that is before us which is Bill C-43.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

I do not mind that intervention, Mr. Speaker, because I do not have time to give the other six reasons why Conservatives are upset but I will briefly mention them.

People are wondering why the Conservatives would hastily bring forward a bill on the Senate that does nothing except cause other problems. As people have postulated, the Conservatives are trying to solidify their Conservative base after upsetting it so much.

However, it would not be fair to say that about the Conservatives without giving some examples. I gave five reasons and the others would be interest deductibility, the reverse on capital gains and the pledge to eliminate the GST on gas when it was above 85¢ a litre. I bought gas on the weekend and I have a bill showing that it is $1.30 a litre now. The Conservatives also have the broken promise to war veterans and the promise for icebreakers in the north. Those are 10 reasons.

The famous saying is, “Every complex problem has a simple solution”, but that is wrong. That is exactly what has happened here. This bill must have come as a shock to many western Conservatives. It would hurt the west dramatically if it were to go forward. The Senate would become more powerful, which was not envisioned in the original Constitution. As senators were elected, the Senate would become equally as powerful as the House of Commons.

The west is poorly represented already, especially Alberta and British Columbia. Representation in the Senate may be in the neighbourhood of 25%, whereas in the House of Commons representation is much closer to one-third. That body would then have the same power as the House of Commons but dramatically diminish the power of the west. We are already upset about the level of power.

As a definite precursor to this, we have suggested that power for the west be balanced in the Senate before its overall power is dramatically increased to the detriment of people in Alberta, British Columbia and the rest of the west. The Liberals will stand hard regardless of what people try to say about us. We certainly cannot vote for a bill that would hurt the west until that particular problem has been solved.

There is another issue in relation to the bill that has not been dealt with. What happens when they are quasi equal bodies? What about the interaction between them? How do we break the backlogs? The last member who spoke suggested that the other body could actually hold up bills. As we know, the Senate defers to the House as it generally understands the position of the House and its role. Very seldom, unless it is a very bad bill, does the Senate stop a bill completely to make amendments. Senators understand their role, which is how the system happens to work, and that is why most bills approved by the House of Commons get through, some amended and some not.

However, how will this work when both Houses have the same moral authority? As many constitutional experts have said, there will be gridlock. This was not envisioned in the Constitution because this particular minor provision was not made. The whole system will be held up.

I want to mention a couple of other flaws, one of which I think was mentioned earlier by a member, and that was the lack of consultation. Unfortunately, this has been the hallmark of the new government on a number of issues. Some of these issues and problems might have been resolved had there been major consultation.

We have had all sorts of examples related to cuts. We had the outcry from NGOs, literacy groups and museum groups about the cuts to women's programs, the court challenges program and the Law Reform Commission. These groups were upset not just by the fact that the cuts were made but that they were made without consultation, which is not the way that government works.

It has been a bit shocking at the justice committee, once again, to hear the witnesses talk about the lack of consultation on bills that have come forward. Of course, the same was true with income trusts and interest deductibility. It has led to a major problem with the provinces that a member raised this morning about the bill.

Ontario and Quebec have not come on side, were not consulted, and there were suggestions from some in Yukon that because Yukon needed a senator right away, the bill should not be stalled.

The last point I want to make, and it has been made before, is the important role of the Senate to protect minorities, those people in rural areas, the Acadians, first nations, Métis and Inuit. They are not going to have a way to be represented to ensure their representation if we make this change.

A solution has to be found for all of us who represent minorities and rural areas of the country before any type of bill like this could go forward. We must ensure in a democracy that the majority does not run a tyranny over the minority and that it is properly represented.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to the hon. member's speech. I found it kind of humorous to be quite honest. The member seems interested in the Conservative base and the protection of the base of Conservative support in the country.

I would like to suggest a couple of things to the hon. member, that as long as we have opposition members who stand in the way of bills like age protection, the Conservative base will be strong.

As long as we have the member of Ajax—Pickering suggesting that we should nationalize the oil program, the Conservative base will be strong.

As long as Liberal members stand in the way of an accountable Senate in Canada, the Conservative base will be strong.

Canadians deserve an accountable, elected Senate. They deserve to be consulted on who represents them in the Senate and you should support it.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I remind the hon. member for Peterborough to address comments through the Chair, not directly at other members.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, it is too bad the member brought up a poor example for the Conservatives because he suggested the age of consent bill. The justice critic just reminded me that at committee last week Liberals saved the bill when the Conservatives voted against it in a voice vote.

I am not concerned about the Conservative base or worried about the 10 reasons that I outlined in my speech. It seems they have upset Conservatives. But there has to be a rationale as to why the government would hastily bring forward a bill that has so little effect, that the Prime Minister can already appoint these particular people identified in elections as the Conservatives pointed out with Mr. Waters. In fact, he does not have to appoint the person under this particular bill and there are no provisions to deal with the other issues arising.

I see there are lots of questions, which is good. Perhaps they could deal with how the bill would interact with the other problems that I mentioned, the interaction between the House of Commons and the Senate, and the protection of minorities which are very substantive issues with the bill. I am sure Conservatives would like to address those. So, how will they address those and still support the bill?

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans]

Mr. Speaker, I too listened to the comments from the hon. member and from his colleague earlier, and frankly, I am still just a little bit confused on whether the Liberal Party believes in Senate reform or does not.

I have heard sort of mixed signals here. I know the Liberals say they do, but it looks very much to me like they favour the status quo. If they do, I wonder if the member can outline for me the specific measures that the Liberal government took during the 13 years that they were in power to advance the cause of Senate reform, those specific measures that they took.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, as I said, we certainly support comprehensive Senate reform and we do not support a bill that is going to cause more problems just by taking one little section of it, as this particular bill does, and cause all the problems that I mentioned because of lack of representation for British Columbia and Alberta.

It causes a lack of representation for minorities, rural people and aboriginal people. We made it quite clear in the last government, which the member is asking about, and in this government that there needs to be comprehensive consultation with the provinces. We would be happy, after that type of consultation has gone forward, to move forward on Senate reform, which I am sure all Canadians would like.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated the member's commentary. He always has the knack of being able to provide some lucidity and clarity to the matters before the House.

One of the things that was mentioned by a questioner was another bill that was passed by the House, the age of consent legislation, which as the member said, would have died last week if it had not been for the Liberal caucus.

As it turns out it appears to me that the record will show that the bill in fact passed and has been sent to the Senate with Liberal support. I wonder if the member would care to further comment.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Yes, Mr. Speaker, definitely the bill has passed. It had Liberal support and it was a terrible example to use.

I want to give another terrible example from the justice committee or perhaps two. One shows the lack of consultation. We had a witness in Toronto, when the justice committee was travelling, who said that the normal procedure when the government drafted bills was to consult with the stakeholders. In this way many people bring forward their opinions and that is not what the government is doing with these bills. It did not do that type of normal process. I think that may be an underlying problem behind this and other bills.

Another example where the Conservatives pushed forward very hard is Bill C-10. A lot of the Conservatives think it is a good bill and that it is important to increase mandatory minimums. When the minimums were defeated in committee, the Liberals put forward an amendment to increase them moderately so at least there would have been some increase in mandatory minimums and every Conservative member in the committee voted against it.

We gave them the opportunity twice, so I think they have to stand up with the philosophies they believe in on all the votes, even if there are things that are proposed by Liberals which do not go as far as they would like, but certainly further along the road that they would like to go than not having any progress at all.

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development]

Mr. Speaker, I would like the member to explain what he meant by moral equality if elected.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for listening to my speech. That is a very good question.

Members of the Senate now realize that they are not elected. They realize that many Canadians feel that the House of Commons should have some primacy in the end result of things because the members of the House of Commons are elected.

As I said earlier, the senators very seldom stop a bill. They quite often amend it, make suggestions back to the House. Last week or the week before, we sent an amendment back and the Senate deferred to the House, and agreed to not go with the amendment it had suggested because the House did not want it.

The moral equivalency is if the senators are equally elected and then feel that they have the same moral authority as the House of Commons to stop all the bills, to start all the bills, or to deal with money bills, we could have a gridlock. Which house then would predominate? How are we going to get government bills through when they are stopped by a house that has equal moral authority or stopped on far more occasions than they are now?

That is the point I am trying to make. I think it is a substantive point that is worth debate in the House and worth debate in any discussion on Senate reform.

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Blackstrap, SK]

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about electing senators which I think would help any region and any province. The member went to great lengths to say that this would be unfair to western Canada. In western Canada, if we get to elect a senator I think that would be in our best interest. I am not sure how he comes to the conclusion that this would be bad for the west. We are talking about electing senators.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, the point is that at the moment in the Senate, unlike in the House of Commons, the west, particularly Alberta and British Columbia, is dramatically under-represented. Alberta and British Columbia have very few senators compared to their population and compared to the rest of Canada.

If we increase the power of the Senate by the ways we have just discussed, under an electoral system having a more election based Senate, then it is going to have more power as we just discussed in the member's last question.

If it has more power then we are pushing forward more power to a body where the west is not represented, whereas right now it is about 25% and in the House of Commons it is closer to 30%, which unfortunately, for the west, is not where the power and decisions are being made.

I am sure all members, if they think about that, would agree that they would much rather have a system where the west was more appropriately representative of its population and hopefully somehow together we can solve that problem in the Senate.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board]

Mr. Speaker, I would like the member to confirm that it is not the west that he is concerned about. It is the Liberal Party he is concerned about because he knows if there are elected senators in the west, there will not be any Liberal senators. We have far too many right now. Is that not the real reason why he opposes elected senators in western Canada?

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I never thought of that, but after the 10 reasons I gave during my speech where the Conservatives have upset their own voters, I have ever confidence that we would do quite well.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it appears that the other parties are not interested in speaking to this bill.

I would like to answer a question from one of my colleagues earlier about what the Liberals did in the last 10 years with respect to democratic initiatives. I guess the member forgot that his own party appointed the member for Newmarket—Aurora as the minister for democratic reform. However, regrettably, the member did not win through the democratic process to the level she wanted and resigned. So, they did do something.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to mention that I will be sharing my time with the member for Brandon—Souris.

I am standing today on behalf of my constituents, the good people of Cambridge and North Dumfries, who actually support improving democracy. They like the idea of giving some of the power back to the people. They do not like the backroom deals that we have come to know from the Liberal Party. They do not like when the Liberals keep doing that, as they just did by making Elizabeth May, the Green Party leader, an honorary member.

People in my riding of Cambridge do not like the political stacking, the partisanship that takes place, and the personal gains that are made for political purposes all the way up to the Senate. Specifically, the people in my riding of Cambridge do not like the favour the few kind of attitude. They like politics to be played out when it favours Canadians.

In particular, my riding of Cambridge is now suffering from some bad decisions made by the provincial Liberals. They have taken back money that has been promised to the hospital in my riding for many years. The only logical reason for that is that the Liberal support is collapsing in the riding of Cambridge and North Dumfries. Constituents do not want more growth in the area of partisanship by anybody here in Ottawa.

Constituents in my riding of Cambridge and North Dumfries are an honest group of people with the foundations of hard work and entrepreneurship. They go to work every day for the most part. They work hard, long hours and pay their taxes. They do not like paying as much tax as they pay and we are responding to that. They are an extremely generous group of people not just with their money and donating to the hospital but with their time. It is a very intelligent group of people. They want an increase in democracy. They want democracy to change for the better, not for the worse. They see that as a good thing.

They want to eliminate any bit of partisanship or preference to a political party or any decision making in Ottawa that favours a certain group, in particular a political group or individual, or the spouse of a campaign manager. They do not want that any more. They are tired of that kind of stuff. They see the effect of that over time and it is not a good thing.

The people in Cambridge and North Dumfries want the House of Commons and the Senate, not just when it is convenient or before an election, to put them first always, and they should be. They do not want anyone in Ottawa working for members of Parliament in Ottawa. They want us to act in the best interests of Canada and Canadians, not the best interests of the future of the Liberal Party, as dim as that may be.

That is why people in Cambridge did not like the sponsorship scandal. They did not like it. They did not like the sponsorship scandal because it actually favoured a few people for political gain. They prefer that we work for them.

They are happy that we, the new Conservative government, have found creative and innovative ways to change democracy and put them first, not continue to put ourselves first and look out for our futures. We are here to look out for their futures.

Bill C-43 does take one more step forward. It is part of this government's obligations and our commitment to put Canadians first. It is good for Canadians, good for Cambridge and good for North Dumfries, and therefore I intend to support Bill C-43.

It is great to be here on this side of the House and be a part of the new, fresh Conservative Government of Canada. I will tell members why. This government is focused on putting Canadians first. On our crime and justice agenda, this government has brought forward a dozen crime and justice bills, if members can believe it , one dozen, which all the parties supported during the election.

Of course that is what those parties do when they look out only for themselves, but this government made promises during the election and here we are in government moving forward on our promises.

Yet the opposition is now opposing our crime and justice bills. Let us imagine that. These are political flip-flop games that the opposition members play at the expense of people in my riding, at the expense of safety in my community and at the expense of safe streets.

As well, the Liberals pretty much destroyed our environment when they were in power. They did absolutely nothing. In fact, it became an embarrassment. Canada became an embarrassment on the world stage. However, as we know, they promised to do it time and time again and asked Canadians to give them another chance. Canadians did so because Canadians are good people. We gave them another chance. They still did nothing. Now we know, from various statements made by those members, that they had no intention of doing it.

This new Canadian government, this new Conservative government, is here for the people of Canada. We have brought forward a number of environmental initiatives that will work both to clean up the environment, with technology that we are going to share around the world, and to maintain the health of Canadians, not just their physical health and mental health, but the health of their economy.

One of the first things this new and fresh government did was bring out the Federal Accountability Act, which of course the opposition changed a hundred ways from Sunday. Let us imagine taking money for a political campaign from children. That is definitely not for Canadians. That is for personal political gains.

I am absolutely thrilled to be part of this new and fresh team that comes up with creative and innovative ideas and actually puts Canadians first. Bill C-43 is a perfect example of that. I just hope it does not get stuck in the Senate, because there are a lot more words in this one than the 66 words in Bill S-4. I think that is at about five days for each letter now, a difficult bill that the Liberal-dominated unelected Senate has been struggling with for some time now. I sure hope this bill does not become another example of that kind of democracy.

Let me explain what Bill C-43 is all about.

Very basically, it says that we have a couple of vacancies for the Senate in a particular province and the bill allows the people in that province to put names forward through an election process run by the Chief Electoral Officer. How innovative. That list of names goes to the Prime Minister. He then selects the names. He may in fact infer that the aboriginal communities should have better representation there. Maybe a province has selected five people for three positions and the Prime Minister thinks we need more women in the Senate. Those are decisions and powers that remain. Ultimately, none of this is going to affect the Governor General's authority because the Governor General still maintains the ability to do the appointment.

Here is what people in Cambridge did not like either: they did not like it when they heard the leader of the official opposition say that the Liberals had to get back to power as quickly as possible. But here is what people in Cambridge like: as Canadians, they want be restored to power. Bill C-43 restores just a little bit more of the influence that Canadians have on the Senate. For that reason, on behalf of the good people in Cambridge and North Dumfries, I am going to support Bill C-43.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, earlier in the discussion there was some mention by some members that Alberta was going to have all Conservative senators and then they would have everything, all the senators and all the MPs. It made me think of one of the reasons why we have a Senate, why it was originally set up. It had to do with making sure there was representation in regions that was balanced and not necessarily all one-sided.

From that narrow aspect alone, it would seem that to have a consultation process supported by political parties that could in fact result in one party that controls a particular province having all of the senators, and all of the members of Parliament, would tend not to represent those who have a different ideological view of where the country should be going, what the future is and what the important things are. I can think of many examples of differences between the parties in this place.

From that standpoint, would the member not agree that there is some merit to having representation across the country, from coast to coast to coast, province and territory, that represents a spectrum of ideologies, to make sure that all Canadians will have representation in Parliament?

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, while I appreciate my hon. colleague's question, the fact remains that the Senate, over time, has come to be such a partisan and politically dominated House that it has lost its credibility with the Canadian people, and there is only one way to get it back.

In fact, it is as a result of the member's own party that we need this bill in the first place. If the Liberals had not played such outright partisan politics, I am sure the Senate would be more effective and have more respect.

On that note of the member asking me whether a group of people in Ontario, let us say, should start telling people in Alberta what their political slant should be, I totally disagree. I think the right thing to do is ask Albertans what they think and bring their views and the views of Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and Manitoba, whatever they are, the views of those folks, through an elected process to the Senate.

That is not happening right now. What is happening right now is that the prime ministers of the Liberal governments of the past stacked the Senate with their own political views and they are dictating the direction of the country.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed listening to the member's speech. I thought he spoke quite well on the topic. I also liked it when he spoke specifically about his constituents in Cambridge and how he feels that they want to be part of the process and how power belongs to the constituents. I can tell members that the constituents of Peterborough are very well equipped to pick a representative for the Senate who would represent Ontario very well.

I want to go back to a question raised just a moment ago with respect to other parts of the country where perhaps a given region might elect certain members all representing a similar brand. Do members not think that it is more than undemocratic for a governing party to suggest that it should put someone in even though the constituents of that riding would never pick that person? Because that person represents a different party, is the suggestion, that person should therefore should be in. That underlines a need for democracy more than anything that I have heard in this House today, that they would put someone--

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member for Cambridge.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's comments. Absolutely, that is the whole democratic process. In my own riding of Cambridge when I was first eligible to vote, I voted NDP, and Max Saltsman was one of the best members of Parliament we have ever had, but then I came to my senses.

I must tell members that my riding has gone to all political parties and is now Conservative. It is the respect of the voters that we are talking about here.

I want to remind the House that it was the Conservative Party that brought in the right for women to vote. It was the Conservative Party that brought in the right for aboriginals to vote. Now we are bringing in the right for Canadians to vote for their Senate without changing the Constitution. It is creative. It is exactly the right thing to do. It is what this country needs.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-43, An Act to provide for consultations with electors on their preferences for appointments to the Senate, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk about something that is very near and dear to the constituents of Kelowna—Lake Country. I know that when the Prime Minister campaigned in the riding at the end of 2005, there was incredible support from my constituents as soon as anything was mentioned about reforming the Senate. It is near and dear to the folks out west.

All Canadians need to have a real awakening. They have seen the reformation that needs to take place. In fact, we have an institution that has been around since 1867, since Confederation. There has been absolutely no reform or change of the Senate other than the provision in 1965 for mandatory retirement at age 75 from the previous appointment for life.

The government is determined, and based on its promises to Canadians, that at least some first steps should take place and to date there has been no progress whatsoever. I know the members opposite, the interveners earlier, were talking about it being piecemeal, that it is just trying to circumvent the constitution.

The reality is that they had 13 years to come up with some sort of concrete democratic reform and nothing took place. Working together in a minority government, we are trying to work in a compromise manner and in increments. I think the government approach is a really achievable, positive and practical step that makes a lot of common sense.

I really find it difficult that specifically my colleagues from British Columbia could vote against this bill. This is one step in the triple E Senate that we are looking at reforming.

I had the opportunity last week to meet Mr. Brown from Alberta. Since 1989 Albertans have been voting for senators-in-waiting and he is the second such individual in Alberta. Mr. Waters was the first, but he unfortunately passed away after a short term in the Senate.

Mr. Brown is ready, willing, and able to step in when the time is appropriate. I think that speaks volumes of the government for listening to not only Albertans but all Canadians, and the hue and cry that has been coming forth, that we need to reform the Senate. Introducing this bill allows the consultation with constituents from sea to sea to sea.

The fact that senators are not elected is seen by many as contrary to the democratic values of Canadians and a major reason why the legitimacy of the Senate is often called into question.

I have the opportunity occasionally to take guests from the riding to the other house. An individual, a page, there does an excellent job. I had a chance to speak with Brad Ramsden a couple of times and he has enlightened me as to the role that the Senate plays.

I think that it does have a value in our constitutional role and our government in Canada. I value its input, but the fact is that today the 105 members, less the vacancies, who are appointed there have been appointed based on patronage, favouritism, and I think that does not speak very well for our democratic system. We live in a country that has a fundamental freedom of democracy. I do not think that there is any greater right than giving people that freedom to consult and select the individual who they want to represent their community.

The government has also introduced the bill because it reinforces, revitalizes, and modernizes long held Canadian values and most importantly the full right of Canadians to be able to choose those who will govern them.

This fundamental value has historically been enhanced and expanded by previous Conservative governments and the present Conservative government is simply continuing that tradition. I think of the statue of Robert Borden that we all walk by just outside the West Block. He led the wartime government that gave the right to women to vote. I think of Mr. Diefenbaker who gave that right to aboriginal people. These are some of the legacies of previous Conservative governments. They were excellent prime ministers and leaders such as the Prime Minister we have today.

Listening to the debate over the last few weeks there have been interveners who asked why the bill was introduced in the House of Commons rather than in Senate.

Bill C-43 authorizes the expenditure of funds related to the implementation and ongoing administration of the consultation process and pursuant to the Constitutional Act, 1867, bills that require the appropriation of funds must be initiated in the House of Commons.

At present the Governor General has the power to summon individuals to the Senate pursuant to section 24 of the Constitution Act, 1867. It states:

The Governor General shall from Time to Time, in the Queen's Name, by Instrument under the Great Seal of Canada, summon qualified Persons to the Senate;--

In my mind the word “qualified” is a very serious word that we need to stop and take a look at. What does qualified mean? It is up to the individual Canadians in each of the provinces and territories to decide who they feel is most qualified to represent them, not somebody who has given the Prime Minister or the leader of the government of the day the most money or helped them out the most to get them into power. We have seen this in the past, no matter which political party.

From a non-partisan perspective, we all need to take a step back and realize this is a very positive way. It is a legacy we can all be proud of in making a positive change in the Government of Canada.

The only difference today is that Canadians now have the opportunity to express their preferences for Senate nominees to the Prime Minister before he provides his advice to the Governor General. Looking at this process since 1989, Albertans have been providing that opportunity for their residents to vote and then give that name forward to the Prime Minister to make that choice.

The challenge of opening up the Constitution, as the Liberals have specifically indicated, is that it is a seven-fifty amending process formula. That means that seven provinces representing 50% of the population have to be in agreement, and we know how difficult that will be. It has been very difficult. Our Minister of Agriculture has been working with all the provinces to revitalize our CAIS program, helping our agricultural community and working tirelessly, and that is a very challenging perspective, getting all 13 voices together.

We need to take this in baby steps. It is a stepped approach. It is common sense, realistic and achievable.

Paragraph 42(1)(b) of the Constitution Act, 1982, requires a seven-fifty amending process for an amendment to the Constitution to alter the method of selecting senators, but the Senate appointment consultations process does not change the method of selecting senators provided in the Constitution. Therefore, there is no requirement for a constitutional amendment and no need for a Supreme Court reference.

The opposition members have to get it through their heads that this does not require a Supreme Court or a constitutional amendment, and I am opening the whole debate. This is an achievable approach. It is realistic and we need to hammer that home. We are standing up for Canadians and asking the 308 elected members in this House to do the will of Canadians.

The Governor General currently has the power to summon individuals to the Senate on the advice of the Prime Minister and this will continue after the passage of the bill. Basically nothing will change. The people will vote and through their local provinces or territories, the names will come to the Prime Minister. In reality, I cannot see any Prime Minister not accepting that person's name if he or she is qualified. The Prime Minister will do that. I know our Prime Minister has firmly said that he will be doing that as the opportunity presents itself.

Basically, this bill provides a mechanism for consultations to be held in one or more provinces to seek the preferences of the electorate on individuals who offer themselves as potential Senate nominees. Anyone who is 30 years of age right now can get into the Senate, except it is for 45 years. With our 66 word bill that is still floundering around there in the other place, we are trying to get a term limit through, whether it is 7, 8, 10 or 12 years instead of the 45 years. We are trying to have two accountable houses and an open, transparent government for Canadians.

The Prime Minister will still have the discretion to decide in which province or provinces the consultations will be held, how many places in the Senate are subject to the consultations, and in fact whether the consultations will be held for current vacancies only or current vacancies plus future vacancies, or just future vacancies.

The process is not triggered automatically by vacancies and there will not be Senate byelections. Consultations will normally take place at the same time as a federal general election, so there is no real additional cost to Canadians. It is included in the process. They will go to the ballot. They will choose the party member that they want to select, and check off the name of the individual, the party, or someone who is running under an independent banner for the Senate.

Consultations will be smooth. The bill provides for some flexibility though, allowing that the consultations could be held at the same time as a provincial general election if an agreement is in place with the province. We are working together with the provinces and territories. I know that is something we always have to keep in mind, that we are partners in government and we work together.

This bill provides for consultations to be carried out with the use of a preferential voting system known as the single transferrable vote. In contrast to the voting system used for the House of Commons elections, electors will be able to rank their preferred candidates on a ballot.

Candidates receiving a defined quota of votes will be included on the list of selected Senate nominees for the Prime Minister's consideration. Should a selected nominee receive votes in excess of the quota, those votes in excess of the quota would be distributed to the electors next preferences. The vote transfer process will continue until enough nominees are selected for the number of places subject to consultation.

It is a privilege and an honour as the member of Parliament for Kelowna—Lake Country to stand here in the House today and speak about a bill that is helping to bring reformation to the other place in this Parliament that is long overdue.

I thank the members opposite for their attention. I hope they will give due consideration for this incremental step that I have said is common sense, reasonable and achievable.

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my hon. colleague's speech and a few things puzzle me about his speech.

First of all, we have perhaps the first and second actions of the Prime Minister on taking office which are: first, appointing someone, a former financial supporter from Montreal to the Senate, which he said he would not do; and second, he put that person in the cabinet as Minister of Public Works. The two first decisions of the Prime Minister regarding the Senate go against his election promises and go against what he says he is trying to now rapidly run backwards and trying to fix with Bill C-43.

Let me ask the hon. member a question because it is another would-be senator that is of interest as well. We have Mr. Bert Brown, the senator-in-waiting, for supposedly the same principles that are enunciated in the bill, taking the consultative referendum or preference given by a province or territory.

I would ask my hon. colleague to consider and recall how many Es did Bert Brown plough in his barley field? It was not one E. There were three Es: equal, elected, effective and comprehensive. It is not done piecemeal. There is no room for what the hon. member calls baby steps.

Canada is a big country. Let us have the constitutional courage of the Fathers of Confederation, and open it up and do it properly if we are going to do it. We should not say we are going to do one thing and do another as with Senator Fortier. Then, of course, even worse, trying to do it piecemeal.

The most extraordinary thing is that this hon. member pretends to represent people from British Columbia, the most disadvantaged people in the country, by giving more validity, more credibility, and elected status to a senator when the distribution is so clearly against the equal distribution for the west and British Columbia.

I would like to hear the hon. member explain to his constituents and my constituents in British Columbia why this could possibly be a good thing, entrenching and amplifying the distribution that is so much to the disadvantage of British Columbians?

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the fact that Senator Fitzpatrick in British Columbia and I work very closely. He is a very hard-working individual and will be retiring soon. He is in the last year of his term and will be turning 75 on his next birthday. He has been a real asset to our community.

I spent nine years on city council and was disappointed that my predecessor, Werner Schmidt, who sat in the House for almost 13 years was often not included in some of those discussions. I think there needs to be more cooperation between the two houses. By electing people, rather than appointing them on partisanship, it would eliminate a lot of those implications. We need to work together.

The fact is that we are speaking up for our constituents in British Columbia who want an elected Senate. We realize we cannot have all three Es at once.

I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Brown last week when he was here in Ottawa. I had three high school students from my constituency visiting and we had a good chat. Mr. Brown is very excited about the opportunity. He realizes that he is part of a process in moving toward the triple E. Hopefully, one day he will be sitting in the Senate when that happens. I have mentioned that we need to work in stages that are realistic, achievable and common sense.

With regard to Senator Fortier, he is a dedicated, hard-working and very talented individual who actually took a pay cut to come and work in the Senate. He has agreed to have his name stand in the next election. I think that speaks volumes for his integrity.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder which of the three Es this bill purports to achieve. It is obviously not equal, because British Columbians are disadvantaged, and that problem has not been solved. It is obviously not going to be effective, because of the gridlock that it will cause between the two Houses, as has been outlined earlier. Last, it is not elected, because the Prime Minister gets to make the choice in the end just like he does right now, so it does not change a thing.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member is correct in the sense that western Canada, specifically Alberta, with 28 Conservative members of Parliament and only six Liberal senators, is definitely not equal. We are looking forward to having individuals in Alberta, B.C. and across the country elect those individuals that they feel will best represent their concerns. As I mentioned, the prime minister of the day will have the opportunity to appoint the individuals that Canadians have elected. I cannot see any prime minister not going with that train of thought.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, taking part in this debate on Bill C-43, is a little like going to the dentist. Personally, it is the last thing I want to be doing, but what can I say, sometimes we need to go to the dentist. However, we never need to go to the tooth puller.

I truly think the bill before us is of absolute no relevance. It addresses a very secondary matter to the detriment of more pressing priorities than the proposed reform, and that the Conservative government should be concerned about.

Bill C-43 provides for the consultation of electors in a province with respect to their preferences for the appointment of senators to represent the province.

Part 1 provides for the administration of a consultation, which is exercised under the general direction and supervision of the Chief Electoral Officer.

Part 2 provides for the holding of a consultation, initiated by an order of the governor in council.

Part 3 provides for a process whereby prospective nominees may confirm their nominations with the Chief Electoral Officer.

Part 4 addresses voting by electors in a consultation.

Part 5 sets out the rules for the counting of votes pursuant to a preferential system, which takes into account the first and subsequent preferences of electors as indicated on their ballots.

Parts 6 and 7 deal with communications and third party advertising in relation to consultations.

Part 8 addresses financial administration by nominees.

Part 9 provides for the enforcement of the enactment, including the establishment of offences and punishments for contraventions of certain provisions.

Part 10 contains transitional provisions, consequential amendments to the Canada Elections Act and the Income Tax Act, coordinating amendments and commencement provisions.

As I mentioned from the outset, the bill is irrelevant. First, it is quite clear to us that the government, the House of Commons, cannot unilaterally change the Senate without the Constitution being changed. Since the Constitution is a federal constitution, all the stakeholders, in other words, all the provinces, Quebec, the federal government, the parliaments of these different jurisdictions, have to take part in the reform process.

As I said at the beginning, we do not think this bill is appropriate because what we really need is something that includes a review of the Constitution. In the late 1970s, the Supreme Court of Canada studied Parliament's ability to unilaterally amend the constitutional provisions concerning the Senate and, in a 1980 decision concerning Parliament's jurisdiction over the upper chamber, decided Parliament could not unilaterally make decisions about major changes to the essential character of the Senate.

It is likely this legislation will encounter opposition from the provinces, including Quebec. Quebec is not the only province that does not support this government's approach in tabling this bill. The government is heading down a path that leads to the reform of an institution whose relevance is in doubt. Even so, the proposed reform is a minor one.

Do they seriously think that a constitutional negotiation process—which would be necessary, as I said—makes sense right now when the government and Parliament should focus their attention on far more important issues? Just consider reintegrating Quebec into the Constitution that Pierre Elliott Trudeau unilaterally patriated.

All of Quebec's governments, regardless of whether they were Liberal or Parti Québécois, have refused to sign the Constitution as it was patriated in the early 1980s. I would note that there is a three-party consensus on this in the National Assembly among the Liberal Party of Quebec, the Parti Québécois and the Action Démocratique du Québéc.

It is clear to us that neither the powers of the Senate, nor the senator selection method, nor the number of senators for each province, nor the residency requirements for senators can be changed without going through the usual amendment procedure set out in section 38 of the Constitution Act, 1982, which requires the consent of the Senate, the House of Commons, and the legislative assemblies of at least two thirds of the provinces, that is, seven provinces, making up at least 50% of Canada's population.

This is the famous 7/50 formula.

We can see that this bill is irrelevant and could even be harmful, setting in motion a round of constitutional negotiations on a relatively minor issue, as I said. On September 21, 2006, Quebec's intergovernmental affairs minister, Benoît Pelletier—who was recently reappointed—testified before the Special Senate Committee on Senate Reform, where he stated:

—from the Quebec government perspective, clearly any future transformation of the Senate into an elected chamber would be an issue that should be dealt with through constitutional negotiations and not simply through unilateral federal action.

He added:

If the Senate becomes a chamber of elected representatives, its original purpose would be changed. Whether this is achieved directly or indirectly, it becomes an extremely important change which must be debated within the framework of constitutional discussions.

So as I mentioned, Quebec's intergovernmental affairs minister, Benoît Pelletier, simply reiterated Quebec's traditional position to the senate committee by saying two things: first, that the federal government cannot reform the Senate unilaterally, and second, that the federal government cannot achieve indirectly what it cannot achieve directly. Clearly, introducing this bill is a way of doing indirectly what the government does not want to do directly.

As I said earlier, Quebec is not alone in its opposition to electing senators. The premiers of Saskatchewan and Manitoba have called on the government to abolish the Senate instead of trying to reform it. Even the premier of Ontario has expressed serious doubts, saying that electing senators would exacerbate inequalities, under the Senate's current mandate.

Electing senators indirectly would change the relationship between the House of Commons and the Senate and create confusion. I will come back to this. These changes cannot be made unilaterally without the consent of Quebec and the provinces, as Quebec is now recognized as a nation by the House of Commons. Everyone will appreciate that such a reform would be most unwelcome and would not be in keeping with the spirit of either the Constitution or what has been passed in this House.

I said that the first reason this bill is irrelevant is that it will inevitably lead to a round of constitutional negotiations, which do not make a great deal of sense, whether they concern the Senate or just the election of senators. Therefore, once again, if the government goes ahead, it will come up against this constitutional problem.

The second thing that, to me, makes this bill irrelevant, is that, even reformed by Bill C-43, the Senate is still an useless institution. Originally, the Senate was supposed to be a chamber of sober second thought. It was also supposed to protect regional interests. But when we look at the current makeup of the Senate, we see that the appointments were clearly partisan, which has distorted the nature or mandate of the Senate.

Introducing the election of senators will not resolve the issue, because senators will sooner or later have to affiliate themselves with a political party in order to have the necessary resources for the elections. So the Senate will become more partisan and we will depart even further from its original purpose, which, in my opinion, is no longer relevant in the 21st century.

As I was saying, the indirect election of senators would not improve this situation. On the contrary, the electoral process will tend to increase the role of political parties and indirectly elected senators could become concerned with things that now fall under the authority of the House of Commons. This would create a duplication, or, at the very least, confusion, at a cost of $77 million a year. We think this is an extremely high cost for an institution that is not only useless, but that , in the case of the proposed reform, would create confusion and a significant duplication of legitimacy.

It is important to note that because of the evolution of the democratic process in Canada, in the provinces and in Quebec, no province has had an upper house since 1968.

It is interesting to note that members of several provincial upper houses—unlike the Senate of Canada—once had to earn their election, for example, Prince Edward Island. Such upper houses have disappeared over the years, however. Quebec abolished its legislative council in 1968. That was nearly 40 years ago.

Furthermore, I feel it is important to point out another factor. Bill C-43 is irrelevant. Despite the amendments proposed by the bill, the Senate would not be truly democratic. The indirect election by Canadians would give the Senate a superficial democratic credibility. In many respects, the Senate would remain a democratic aberration.

First of all, public consultation is not binding. The bill provides for public consultation, but does not talk about an election, per se, in order to select senators. The Prime Minister maintains the authority to appoint or not appoint the senators chosen by the public and could therefore decide not to appoint a candidate selected in the election process. In one of the background papers provided by the government concerning this bill, it states:

The Prime Minister can take into account the results of the consultation when making recommendations to the Governor General regarding future representatives of a province or territory in the Senate.

Furthermore, how can we trust this Prime Minister, who did not hesitate to appoint Michael Fortier to the Senate, even though he himself criticized the Liberals' partisan appointments? We therefore see that this new Conservative government—which is no longer new, since it has been in power for 15 or 16 months—simply copied the Liberal method of appointing senators.

Also, I recall very well that, during the election campaign, the Prime Minister promised to appoint only elected members to the cabinet. With that Senate appointment, he broke the promise he had made to voters during the campaign. During the next election, voters will be able to judge for themselves how well the Conservatives can keep their promises.

One more factor is very worrisome. Voters will not be represented equally in the Senate. For instance, in the case of Prince Edward Island, one senator will represent some 27,000 voters, while in other areas of Canada—particularly in Quebec—that proportion will be much higher.

There will be virtually no way to remove senators.

The bill provides for the consultation of the population for the appointment of senators, although it is not binding, as we have just seen. They will be appointed for one term. I realize that some say that the bill provides for a maximum term of eight years for senators, which could solve the problem. But it seems to me that presenting oneself to the electorate only once in eight years is far from a guarantee that these so-called “elected” senators will reflect the concerns of citizens of Quebec or Canada.

In addition, the Senate is an institution that was created a very long time ago, and I find it ridiculous that certain restrictions on presenting oneself as a candidate for the position of senator have been retained. At present, you must be at least 30 years old and own real property worth at least $4,000 in the province and the riding that the individual is appointed to represent. Hence, all those under 30 are excluded. I find that very discriminatory. The rule about assets penalizes a part of our population that might seek to be candidates for such elections. This additional factor demonstrates that the proposal before us does not address the root cause of the problem and that it even seeks to rehabilitate an institution that has lost credibility in the eyes of a good number of Canadians and Quebeckers.

Indirectly, the elected Senate would even undermine the parliamentary system. I will come back to that. As you know, in the British parliamentary system, the executive defends the confidence conferred on it by the House of Commons, which is also elected. Thus, the election of the Senate alone would undermine the preeminence of the House of Commons and would create confusion. The election of two Houses would complicate the issue of preponderance and consequently would weaken the parliamentary system.

The Bloc thinks that this is an ill-conceived and irrelevant bill. Moreover, there is no set spending limit for the candidates. The government says that the individual contribution limits and the transfer limits imposed on parties will be sufficient to limit spending. However, since there is an unlimited number of potential candidates and election spending is subject to partial reimbursement out of public funds, it seems unreasonable not to limit individual spending. Lastly, some seats could be vacant for four years, unless there is a reserve. If a senator left their seat for health reasons, if they died or left for some other reason, we would have to wait four years for a new senator. As I said, unless a reserve is created, the bill is ill-conceived from this perspective.

For all these reasons, we would have preferred debating another subject today. As I said earlier, I feel as though I am at the tooth puller instead of being at the dentist. I do not want to alienate my dentist or dentists in general. It is good to go to the dentist, it is even recommended. But it is not recommended to go to a tooth puller.

I think we should be addressing real problems and real issues, such as the fiscal imbalance. In the budget—we continue to support Bill C-52, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 19, 2007—there is a partial financial correction to the fiscal imbalance, but the crux of it is not corrected. The federal government has too much revenue in relation to its responsibilities. Its transfers related to matters under provincial jurisdiction continue to keep Quebec and the other provinces at the mercy of unilateral decisions made here in Ottawa, even though those jurisdictions belong to the provinces. The Bloc feels that the tax base corresponding to the transfers for health, social programs and post-secondary education should, quite simply, be transferred to the provinces as tax points, whether through the GST or income tax.

Still with the fiscal imbalance, the ability to control or even limit the federal government's spending power should be a priority. The Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister have repeatedly promised legislation to limit federal spending power. We are still waiting for this legislation. Such legislation would allow a province, such as Quebec for example, to withdraw from a program implemented, in a shared or unilateral manner, by the federal government in the jurisdictions of the provinces and Quebec. Quebec could opt out with full compensation and without condition. This is important for the people of Quebec and people who need a good health care system, a good education system and social programs that provide an adequate social safety net. For those people, the Senate is of little or no concern in their daily lives.

I would now like to talk about the environment. It seems to me that, ever since the plan was introduced by the Minister of the Environment, criticism has not stopped flooding in from all sides, including from scientists, environmentalists and industrialists alike. We just learned this morning about a poll conducted in Alberta that reveals that 92% of Albertans believe that the oil companies should make a greater effort to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Even more interesting, 70%—I am not sure about this percentage—of Albertans said that these reductions should be in absolute targets, and not intensity targets. What people want in the next few years is a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to what we have seen in recent years. They do not want to see merely a slower increase, which would still mean more in the end, even if we produce less per tonne. It is not only Quebeckers and the general population of Canada that are concerned about this. These are also the concerns of Albertans, who, as we all know, are closely tied to the oil and gas industry.

I would like to talk about foreign policy. This should have been a concern. We do not have a foreign policy statement. The Liberal government, before the election that brought its defeat, had introduced a foreign policy statement dealing with defence and international trade.

No one seems to know where we are headed with this, but we are still spending. The government has just announced the purchase of more tanks, but they were purchased on the sly. International cooperation, however, has not seen much development.

Lastly, employment insurance, assistance programs for festivals and exhibitions, the Saint-Hubert airport, these all deserved greater attention, but that attention has been diverted to Bill C-43.

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his thorough coverage of this issue as well as some other important issues to Canadians that do not directly relate to Bill C-43.

I certainly agree with what the hon. member said about the need for a comprehensive reform of the Senate if we are going to make any changes at all. The built-in inequities that currently exist and the potential for a gridlock with the House of Commons could be exacerbated if there were elected senators without dealing with issues such as mandate and distribution.

On the issue of distribution, the hon. member mentioned the disproportion between Quebec and one of the Atlantic provinces, which he mentioned but which I cannot remember which one, that had a Senate seat for every 27,000 people. That is an extremely important comparison to make but only to give further emphasis to the discrepancy in representation for those in British Columbia where there is one senator for every 660,000 people. That is an extraordinary difference.

I am hopeful that the hon. member from the Bloc is suggesting that in any change to the Senate there would be a redistribution of seats so that British Columbia would enjoy the same representation as Quebec currently does. That would be an extremely important improvement.

My colleague raised the issue of Quebec not having been a signatory as a province to the 1982 Constitution. We know that is so and we regret that fact. I think all members of the House would like to have seen that happen. However, that raises an interesting situation. My numbers may be slightly off but the vast majority of federally elected members of Parliament from Quebec, I think it was 74 out of 75, voted with the Liberal government of the day to support the repatriation of the Constitution and the constitutional amendments, including the charter. Quebec has been a magnificent model for the rest of the country in terms of its charter legislation provincially and the jurisprudence that has come out of that.

If the hon. member does not think it is significant that elected MPs from Quebec supported the charter, I wonder what he thinks the significance is of his role as a federally elected member of Parliament in the Bloc. Does he then relegate the Bloc Québécois to insignificance in this chamber?

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague asked a number of questions just now. I will start by addressing the last one because it is extremely relevant. It shows how important the Bloc's presence is here in Ottawa as long as Quebec is part of the Canadian Confederation, which we hope will not be for much longer, but that is the subject of another debate.

The member is right. In 1979 or 1980—I do not remember exactly when the vote took place—73 or 74 Liberals voted for this bill. As far as I know, three members—two Liberals and one Conservative, Roch LaSalle, the member for Joliette, if I may remind the members—voted against it. At that time, nobody in the House of Commons—except for a few individuals—was particularly concerned about protecting Quebec's rights as a nation. Now we have a political party that represents a large proportion of the people of Quebec, who believe that they are a nation and that that nation should have everything it needs to develop fully, including a country of its own.

The Bloc Québécois' presence here has done away with the schizophrenia that existed back then. Had the Bloc Québécois been around for that vote, there might have been 50 Bloc Québécois members voting against the unilateral patriation of the Constitution. Obviously, this debate is ongoing in Quebec and is far from over.

I would like to clarify something else. We do not want to reform the Senate. We are not here to reform Canadian institutions. We want out. We will not stop amendments that may be relevant on a democratic level—like the amendment to the Canada Elections Act concerning campaign financing—but we are not here to make major changes to federal institutions. We are here because we want out.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure for me to rise and speak on this very important bill.

I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission.

When we talk about the Senate, it brings out a lot of emotions in Canadians. That is because the Senate is becoming a dinosaur of an institution on the Canadian democratic scene. That is not because of the individuals who are in the Senate. They are very fine individuals and are dedicated and committed to public life for the betterment of Canada.

We are talking about an institution that shackles these individuals and stops them from using their full potential to contribute to public life in Canada. That is because over a period of time the way the institution has been managed has been manipulated and has slowly come to the point where today Canadians do not wish to have this institution.

Right across the country we are seeing debate about abolishing the Senate. Right across the country we are seeing that Canadians either do not want the Senate or they want to reform it.

When I was campaigning in 1997 in Calgary and I talked about the Senate, there was an immediate anger from Canadians. This institution did not represent their point of view. It did not represent what people normally would feel, which is that they have an elected representative in the Parliament of Canada. What they had was not an elected representative. What they had in the Senate was somebody who was in the Parliament of Canada but who was not speaking for them.

That is something that Canadians and anyone in a democratic institution understands, and they say that it is not acceptable. As a matter of fact, even today Tony Blair is trying to bring reform to the House of Lords because he knows that these institutions have outlived their usefulness. That is the way it is. For our institution here in Canada it is the same, but I want to make sure we understand that we are not talking of putting down the senators now.

Both the Liberal Party and our colleague from the Bloc, as I just heard, are saying that the bill does not bring about proper reform. The Liberals are saying that we should do a full reform, that this is what they want to do. Yes, we all agree that there is a need for reform, but that, as we know and as they know, is not going to happen because of the way our Constitution is set up. We need to take incremental steps toward achieving that goal.

Canadians want this. They are demanding that something be done about this institution. Regretfully, I would say that this institution is a blight on democracy in Canada because of the way it is set up. Again I want to say this: it has nothing to do with individuals there.

Around the world, Canada has a very stellar reputation for democracy. We go out preaching democracy, just as I have done many times myself. The foreign affairs committee is doing a major study on democratic reform and how Canada should go ahead and promote democracy around the world. This is one of our very strong values when we go out into the world. CIDA does it. Everyone else does it. It is a strength that Canada has. People around the world respect Canada for this institution and for what we do in the promotion of democracy.

On many occasions I have had the opportunity to speak members of opposition parties who have come to Canada to see how Canadian democracy works. What has been amazing during many of the times that I have gone overseas and have talked to parliamentarians in other parts of the world is that they really do not know how our Senate works. They think our Senate is an elected Senate. They think our Senate is something very powerful, like the American senate.

I have gone on visits with senators. I have seen red carpet laid outside for the senators. Some think that the Senate is the most important institution in Canada. When I tell them that there is something wrong in our democracy and that the Senate is an institution that is not elected by Canadians, that is the first shock. The second shock is that it is a job for life. Where would anyone get a job for life? The senators have nothing to fear. They have nothing to worry about. That is another shock for people. People ask me if I am telling them that senators are there for life and do not have to be re-elected. I tell them yes, they do not have to be re-elected and they are there for life.

They ask, “Who appoints them?” The Prime Minister, I say. What criteria are there to be in the Senate, they wonder. They ask, “Is it to be a buddy of the Prime Minister or what?” There are no criteria for who will be in the Senate, I tell them.

When they first hear about this, they actually start shaking their heads and say that we must be kidding or joking and I tell them no, we are not. It is a shock to them that in Canada, a land that promotes democracy out there in the world, we have an institution that is absolutely undemocratic. It is totally undemocratic. It has become undemocratic over a period of time because of the way it has been manipulated, the way that has been done.

Canadians today have absolutely no confidence in that institution. What do we do? Do we close our eyes? Do we say that we have an institution but there is nothing we can do because we want it to have complete reform? That is a cop-out. The Liberal Party would like to leave the Senate as it is because it is an institution that has benefited them the most, so now they say that we must have complete reform.

I just heard my colleague from British Columbia say that British Columbia is unrepresented in the Senate. They are all angry with the Senate. We just heard the member from Quebec talk about why the Senate is irrelevant as far as he is concerned. But we have to do something. We cannot just carry on. We cannot just carry on with our eyes closed and say that here we have an institution that is non-responsive and we cannot do anything about it, because it will never happen. We know how the Canadian political scene is. It will never happen. There are differences between provinces demanding all these things. Where will we get this unanimity between provinces? How many provinces will get what seats? Who will do what? Will it be an elected Senate?

However, do we close our eyes and let that institution carry on and be a burden on the taxpayers, who are getting nothing out of it? No.

Even better, in regard to the individuals who are serving as senators and are excellent people, we need their expertise. We need to give them legitimacy. We need to understand that. We need to know that when they are saying something people are listening to them. Right now nobody listens to them because of the way it is set up. They themselves are shackled. They are very fine individuals who have served Canada very well. They need to be heard. If they cannot be heard with this kind of institution, then they are muzzled, they are silenced, because nobody will listen to them.

Do we want an institution like that? No. We need to do an incremental step. Yes, this bill may not address many of the concerns that everybody has, those I have just outlined about the amount of representation and from where, and all of these other things that are a big flaw in this institution. We will not be able to do all of it. This may not go all the way, but it is a step in the direction of what Canadians want, which is that they will have voice in who will be sitting in the chamber. The bill provides them that voice. We have to be cognizant of the fact and provide them with that without changing the Constitution. As for any move to change the Constitution, believe me, it is not going to happen. We have seen this happening in the past. We have seen these things going on out there, with too much diversity of opinion to have unanimity on what to do.

I know that everybody in the House knows we need to make a change. I am urging all members to let us go on with this small, incremental step.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened to the hon. member's remarks and also to many remarks earlier in the day. I am absolutely amazed at how government members can stand there and say that certain things fit in with a certain perception of the Senate in this country.

I would ask the member to give us some specifics. He mentioned that Canada is seen as one of the best democracies around the world. That did not happen just because of this chamber. That happened because of both chambers. It is great fun in this House to attack the other chamber, it seems, but let us put some evidence on the table.

The member said that the Senate is a blight on democracy. Could the member tell me how? Could he explain specifically how it is such a blight on democracy? He said the Senate has become completely undemocratic, and I ask members not to give me the excuse that senators are not elected, because that is just an excuse.

As for whether senators are elected or not or appointed under certain conditions to do certain things and be a chamber of sober second thought, which they are, let us have some facts. The member went on to say that nobody listens to them, yet time and again I have heard members on that side of the House quote the Kirby report, et cetera.

Instead of just attacking, could the member explain constructively all the points that are so bad about our Senate? Yes, it needs to be changed, but I ask him to explain it. He should not just cater to the perception that is out there. Let us have some facts.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is amazing that the member is saying to show him what is wrong with the Senate and why Canadians are upset about the Senate. It is amazing. I can give a litany of things, aside from the fact that senators are not elected. Also, when the Liberals were in government it was a reward for their buddies and for the then prime minister's buddies. That is what is wrong with the Senate. It is because their buddies are in that institution--

[An hon. member]

Let's talk about their work.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

The member can listen to the Senate reports, but I can tell him what Canadians are saying out there and I can tell him what constituents are saying out there. They are saying, “They do not listen to me”.

Yes, the Senate is a blight because, aside from the fact that they are not elected, it is a job for life. Where else is there a job for life anywhere out there?

Third, let us look at the record of that party for its buddies who have been put in the Senate as a reward. That is the chamber of second thought? A reward for their buddies?

That is not what the issue is here. The issue here is that is we need to reform the Senate so that the people of Canada now can have a choice.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, for those watching at home I need to clarify the Liberals' position here. The question that was asked was, “What is wrong with an institution within a democracy in which no vote is cast?”

By most traditional definitions of a democracy, there is some sort of issuance of the public opinion, whereby the citizens of a country get to express their opinion and place in the stead of their voices the elected officials. That is what the foundation of democracy has been. The Liberals have somehow confused themselves with the notion that while the Senate is placed with well-heeled fundraisers and political friends that somehow represents a shining moment in the democratic process.

We disagree with much of what is being said by the government on this issue. We think this is a band-aid approach to a fundamentally flawed institution. Anybody who knows the NDP and has voted NDP knows that this has been a very clear policy for many years for us.

I have a question for my hon. colleague, who has said a wide range of things. On this value for money question, has he done any estimates on how much it actually costs to sustain this place of privilege, this place where appointments are given by fundraising capacity for a particular friend? Then that cost must be justified against his own government's appointment of its senator into cabinet when the Conservatives were unable to win a seat in the Montreal area and then chose to appoint someone into the cabinet. It seems contradictory in terms to use what we all agree is a terrible method. Now it seems that the government has hypocrisy in its midst. I wonder if he can explain that to Canadians.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Mr. Speaker, we do not have hypocrisy in this. What we are saying is, as the hon. member knows and has said, this is a flawed institution. Therefore, we need to have a small incremental step moving toward that direction to improve this institution. That is all the bill would do. We have to move ahead and do something about this institution, and the bill is all about that.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to Bill C-43, the Senate appointments consultations act.

If people are from western Canada, they will know that there are lot of strong opinions about the Senate. I grew up there and I was influenced by many of those opinions. Like every member of Parliament, I try to keep in touch with my constituents and when I do, from to time I hear some pretty strong sentiments about the Senate of Canada.

I was at a home show this past weekend for 20 hours or so and talked to hundreds of people on a lot of different topics, but the they had opinions about the Senate as well. It is pretty clear, at least in western Canada, it has lost some credibility among Canadians.

There are a number of opinions in the House as well. We heard Bloc members speak, but I am not sure if they have a coherent opinion or view on what the Senate of Canada should do or whether it should exist or not.

The NDP's position is pretty clear, that it should be abolished. It seems to me that misses the point. I believe the Senate does do some good work. As the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, I follow the work of the Senate committee as well and appreciate what it contributes to our work in the House.

I am starting to read through a human rights committee report from the Senate called “Children: The Silenced Citizens”. I appreciate some of the insights it is bringing to this. I do not think abolishing it is answer.

The Liberal position is a bit fuzzier. In my opinion they favour the status quo. They talk about favouring some kind of comprehensive overhaul of the Senate, whatever that might look like. We realize that is a very difficult thing to do. I think they conclude that it is better to do nothing than to do something, which is what we are going to do. They prefer the system we have now where senators are chosen based on either the party's support or the prime minister of the day. I do not think Canadians prefer that approach, as my colleague, the member for Calgary East, has said so eloquently, and we need to change that.

Our position as a government is clear. We want to work toward an effective, independent and democratically elected body that equitably represents all regions. Bill C-43 is not the only part of our agenda in this regard. Bill S-4, a bill that is in the Senate, would put term limits on senators of eight years. The Senate has had the bill for almost a month, as has been said already in the debate, a bill that is a couple of paragraphs long, 66 words. We are having a hard time getting that out of there. However, it is an important part of the reform of the Senate.

The question before us as parliamentarians is how does Bill C-43 contribute to this goal of the government of an effective, independent and democratically elected body that equitably represents all regions?

Because I anticipate this question coming, let me say that we could achieve this goal through a major overhaul of the Senate. As we all know, subsection 42(1) of the Constitution Act makes it very difficult to amend the Senate. Seven provinces representing 50% of the population is needed to approve any amendment. This makes it very difficult, if not impossible to get there, at least in a very expeditious way. It requires a level of consensus that is very difficult to achieve.

What are our options? I suppose the options are to do what the Liberals propose, which is to do nothing. Our option is to take a practical, achievable step that will provide a solid basis for further reform so we can get all the way there.

We want to generate momentum. As the people who live in the provinces see how this works, that we allow a democratic process to be involved in who represents them in the Senate, they will recognize that we now need to take further steps to get where we need to go.

The bill gives Canadians a voice in choosing who represents them. The way that it works now, according to section 24 of our Constitution, is the Governor General from time to time summons qualified persons to the Senate, traditionally on the advice of the prime minister. In fact, it happens no other way.

As the member for Calgary East has said, it goes against the grain of what Canadians think should happen in a democratic system. In fact, it is unlike most other democratic countries that have a higher chamber. Most countries have gone to an elected body. Canadians want to have a say in who represents them.

This is just another in a list of Conservative democratic reforms. Under the government's leadership of Robert Borden, women received the right to vote. Under the government of John Diefenbaker, aboriginals obtained the right to vote. This is another step forward in having a more democratic Parliament.

The bill would provide mechanisms for consultations to be held in one or more provinces to seek the preferences of the electorate on individuals who offer themselves as potential Senate nominees. It is envisioned that this will happen usually at the same time as a general election, although there is a bit of flexibility built into the act so it could happen at the time of a provincial election as well.

The bill would provide for a single transferrable vote to give a certain element of proportionality. It is an important improvement to make it different from the House of Commons, which continues to operate with the first past the post system.

In my view, and I think in the view of constitutional experts, this does not require any constitutional change. It does not affect the Governor General's power to appoint or the prime minister's power to recommend. It is not a direct election of senators. It does not change the constitutional requirements of who can serve as a senator. Bill C-43 would simply provide a mechanism for the prime minister to hold a consultation with the citizens of Canada.

I have heard a number of objections already. One is that the Senate is a place where the representation of women and minorities can be more accurately reflected. If people were to take the House of Commons tour, as I have with constituents from time to time, and go to the other place, they will be told that the appointment of senators allows for more women and minorities. In fact, numbers have increased both in this place and in that chamber, but I acknowledge that there is more to be done in that regard.

The government is hopeful, as it starts down this road, that women and minority candidates will participate fully in this consultation process. I see no reason why that would not and could not happen. In fact, there still is a role for political parties to play in the nomination of potential Senate nominees, as here in the House of Commons, although a more limited role, which is as it should be in the Senate. Therefore, parties can take the initiative to work toward this as well.

In this bill the prime minister's prerogative to recommend qualified individuals remains. Should the prime minister felt it was necessary to take steps to address a particular imbalance, perhaps in one of these areas, he or she could continue to appoint a selected candidate to address the imbalance.

I am pleased to support this bill. Bill C-43 takes an important step toward improving and vitalizing the Senate as a national democratic institution. That is what Canadians want. They want an effective, independent, democratically elected body that equitably represents all regions. Bill C-43 takes an important step toward that goal.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Before moving on to questions and comments, it is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Richmond Hill, Foreign Affairs; the hon. member for Madawaska—Restigouche, Passport Canada.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's comments on the Senate and this incremental reform were thoughtful.

I want to ask him a fairly big vision question. If this is an incremental step, what is it an incremental step toward? Will the Senate mirror the House of Commons in representative make-up, that is gender, race, linguistic and regional issues, and will it mirror the Commons in terms of its power? Is there a possibility of deadlock? The overall question is, if we are going to have two animals of the same sort, why not join in with the NDP, not that I agree with it, and eliminate the Senate?

What assurance could the member give the House and the people of Canada that the regions of Canada and the minorities of Canada, by linguistics and race, will be protected as they are in the Senate? What is wrong, as the Americans do, in giving small places representative power beyond their numbers? Who ever complained that a senator from Maine might be the president of the United States some day? What is so wrong with representing minorities and regions in a fashion that is not first past the post by the most people, which would result in a make-up like this chamber, which is primarily white and male?

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not see anything in the current approach to the Senate, either in the current make-up of the Senate or in the approach to actually appointing who is there, that would meet any of the goals the member seems to want.

If it happens there is a more equitable distribution there, of women for example, as reflecting the population or minorities, that only happens by accident. The prime minister of the day has no formula to follow as senators are appointed. I do not see there is any great difference here.

We have a formula now in terms of how many senators can come from each province or region. In fact, when we talk about equitability, I do not think I share the view of the member for Vancouver Quadra. We do have a problem in B.C., that we do not have the right number of senators, but not because there is only a certain number for the population of British Columbia. That would make it a proportional institution, something like the House, which runs counter to what the Senate should be like. It should be an equal number of votes for a region or province. It does not have to do with proportional representation based on population.

There is some work to be done. We need more senators from B.C. because the other regions have more.

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

Mr. Speaker, I was interested to hear the member's comments about representation of women. We know the House of Commons is failing miserably in terms of representation of women. In fact, in the 2006 election, the numbers here fell from 65 to 64, which is exactly 20.8% of the House.

I was interested to hear the member talk about the fact there was a possibility that representation of women could be looked at in the Senate. He also talked about parties and that they may or may not be involved. We know the parties, except for New Democrats, with 41% of their members being women, have also failed miserably.

Could the member comment on how he would see this proposed electoral Senate reform addressing the fact of under-representation of women in both chambers?

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about Senate reform and there are two ways built into Bill C-43.

First, the political parties can have a role in the nomination of Senate candidates and parties that choose to do so can work toward involving more women in those.

I do not know of any nomination events in our party, for example, that have excluded women simply because they are women. However, nor should they be included just because they are women. I do not think Canadians want it to work that way. However, parties can take a role in encouraging, nurturing and providing opportunities and so on.

The other way, as I said in my remarks, is that at the end of Bill C-43 when we have implemented this approach, the prime minister still has the power to recommend to the Governor General whomever he chooses.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-43, the Senate appointment consultations act.

As members will note throughout my remarks, the intent of the bill and the way in which it was done is typical of the new government's approach to doing things. It has a nice sounding name with kind of an empty slogan. It has good optics but it is just a smokescreen because, at the end of the day, it is the usual charade from the Prime Minister as he tries to leave the impression that he is doing something progressive but, in essence, he is following his undemocratic ways of making government policy.

It is great in perception but it is poor in reality. I maintain that this approach is dangerous in reality. What the Prime Minister is attempting to do is to change the Constitution by non-constitutional means.

Constitutions are important and they are there for a reason. They are the foundation on which we do things as a country. What the Prime Minister is trying to do in this instance is to go around the Constitution by one, two and three small steps. However, at the end of the day we could have a country that we do not quite recognize.

We all know the Prime Minister's love for the presidential style. We see how he operates with his podium. He kind of likes the U.S. Republican kind of system but we have a representative democracy in this country. We are based on the British system. We know where the Prime Minister really wants to go.

We just heard a shout from the other side. It is rather interesting how government members tend to fall in line and try to build on the lack of understanding of the Senate to make their point.

I listened as the parliamentary secretary to the House leader spend a lot of his time this morning attacking the Senate. He did not give much information on Bill C-43 but he spent most of his time attacking the Senate and using examples such as the Senate is not passing Bill S-4. One the lines he used was that the bill was only 66 words but that it had taken them 12 months. I believe the point he made was that it was five words a month. What does that have to do with the issue?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

No, it does not. The member opposite says that it has a lot to do with it but it does not. The fact is that those 66 words are important in terms of what they may mean in the future. It is not the number of words that matter, it is what the words mean. It is the consequences of those words and those decisions that may be made in the future as a result of changing the constitutionality of this country in a certain way.

One of the reasons the Senate is in place is to give legislation sober second thought in a much less partisan way than is done in this chamber. The Senate's job is to protect against a government that abuses its power and tries to undercut the safeguards that are placed in the Constitution, which is exactly what the Senate is doing.

Yes, I know the country and the people in this House have a certain negative perception of the Senate but how many of those people who always talk negatively about the Senate have actually watched what it does? How many of them have read Senate reports? None or very few. I see one member and I know he is an avid reader who has no doubt read the reports.

However, it is very evident that protection is needed right now from the Prime Minister in terms of where the country may or may not go. When we have a Prime Minister who is operating more like a dictator than a prime minister and a representative of democracy, then we need that sober second thought.

What makes it more serious is that party talked about coming to this place and having free votes and it has not had one free vote. We do not hear government backbenchers speaking out and, in fact, we hardly even hear a cabinet minister speaking out.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

As my colleague said, this is strictly a one-man show.

This bill is designed to manoeuvre, manipulate and move toward constitutional change without doing it properly under the Constitution that was passed several decades ago.

We all know the Prime Minister likes to operate, as I said earlier, in a presidential style. We know he likes the system south of the border much better than this system. However, the system south of the border, in terms of its congress and senate, has checks and balances that our chambers do not have. If we are going to make those kind of changes and go in that direction, then we should do it all inclusively.

If the Prime Minister wants to go down that road and make the kind of changes that we know he is thinking about, then he should have the courage to put forward an all encompassing package that proposes the changes and sets in place the processes necessary to do it in a well-debated and well-balanced way.

I am very concerned about the process that the Prime Minister follows on a number of fronts but I will get to those a bit later.

I must point out that instead of saying what this bill would or would not do for democracy and in getting a more effective Senate, government members just attack the integrity of the Senate and follow the negative perceptions that are out there. I believe they do so in order to build and expand on those negative perceptions.

In a former life I was a farm leader and I had the opportunity to make quite a number of presentations before both the Senate and the House of Commons. From my perspective, the Senate usually did a more thorough job because partisanship was not at play. No political games were being played. The Senate does in fact do good work.

The parliamentary secretary who just spoke mentioned a Senate study that he is currently reading. I have a number of studies here that the Senate has done but one that is well worth reading, entitled, “Understanding Freefall: The Challenge of the Rural Poor”, was done by the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry.

We all know the work the defence committee has done in terms of security at our borders. It is unlikely that same kind of report would have been done in the Commons because the Prime Minister would not allow his members to speak negatively about some of the things that could be happening at the border. However, the Senate is not afraid of doing that and it takes those kinds of positions.

In his remarks on April 20th, the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform said:

This bill follows through on the promise made to the people of Canada in the Speech from the Throne to “explore means to ensure that the Senate better reflects both the democratic values of Canadians and the needs of Canada's regions”. More importantly, this bill strengthens the pillars of our proud Canadian democracy.

The House leader never went on to prove his point. He never elaborated in terms of how this would strengthen democratic values and meet the needs of the regions. In fact, it does nothing of the sort.

He went on at great lengths to talk about the importance of the vote, and I agree with him, but a vote must also mean something. However, in the way that Bill C-43 is written, a vote does not necessarily mean much at all. It is non-binding on the Prime Minister. It is piecemeal in terms of its approach. It does nothing to reflect democratic values or to enhance Canada's regions any more than is already the case with appointments.

I want to go back to the member's second point because I want to make a last line in the quote by the House leader. He said:

More importantly, this bill strengthens the pillars of our proud Canadian democracy.

Absolutely nothing is further from the truth. This bill does not strengthen the pillars of our democracy. In fact, it is a manipulation by the Prime Minister in trying to get around the Constitution. That is not strengthening our democracy. That is undermining our democratic values.

If anything, the Prime Minister should absolutely follow the Constitution and do the process in the proper form and in the proper way. The Prime Minister is attempting to get around the Constitution without really going through that necessary process to make constitutional change. In other words, the very process that the Prime Minister has chosen is against the foundation of our democracy, our Constitution.

I want to quote what the Library of Parliament had to say on the proper process. It says:

In 1982, the Constitution of Canada was patriated. It is now expressly provided by section 42(1)(b) of the Constitution Act, 1982 that an amendment to the method of selecting senators must be agreed on by the Senate, the House of Commons and at least two-thirds of the provinces that have at least 50% of the population of all provinces.

That is the proper process.

The Library of Parliament goes on to say:

At present, members of the Senate are appointed by the Governor General on the recommendation of the Prime Minister.

It then talks about the premise of Bill C-43 and states:

The premise of Bill C-43 is that it does not, as such, amend the method of selecting senators and therefore does not require a constitutional amendment.

I will admit that is what the Library said. The Library goes on to say:

Instead, it establishes a list of selected nominees that reflects electors’ preferences.

What that really means is that the Prime Minister is making the change in a kind of a sneaky way. He is manipulating people, which is what he typically does. I will get to a better example later.

I want to mention one other thing because quite a number of people talked about the day of the vote, polling day. Many have said that it will not cost more because it will be done the same day as a general election, federally or provincially.

Let us think about that for a minute and look back throughout history. When Mr. Mulroney was prime minister there were quite a number of Liberals in the Senate. It balanced the power of this place. When Prime Minister Chrétien was first elected there were more Conservatives in the Senate and it balanced the power of this place again.

However, if there is an election and there is a sweep politically then we do not have that safeguard in the Senate. We no longer have that sober second thought because everybody will be taken. We all know that sometimes happens in elections. We are politicians. We saw it in 1993. If that sweep would have happened in 1993 with a Senate election, we would not have a Senate to give that sober second thought that is direly needed when some legislation is passed in this place.

Let me sum up a few more points on the bill as they relate to what I would call our constitutional avoidance Prime Minister. We believe in the Liberal Party on this side of the House in democratic reform, but the bill is not democratic reform. It allows Senate nominees to be elected but does not make the elections binding. This could lead to potentially wasteful elections that the Prime Minister could ignore at will.

I see some members looking surprised that the Prime Minister might ignore it. I do not think there was a prime minister ever in Canadian history who has broken as many promises at this one did, everything in terms of no appointments to the Senate, a senator sitting over there in the Senate not able to answer questions, his position on income trusts, his promise on the Canadian Wheat Board but not really having the authority to make that promise but still manipulated it to get his way, and the list goes on too long for me to elaborate.

The bill also ignores provincial and regional equity, weakening the voices of the provinces such as British Columbia and Alberta that currently have fewer senators than their population warrants.

The initiative will increase partisanship in the Senate and aggravate the problem of potential deadlock between the two houses of Parliament. As so often the case with this government no meaningful consultations were held with the provinces or Canadians. In fact, Ontario and Quebec are among those who have already spoken out against the idea of piecemeal Senate reform.

Senate reform should not be piecemeal. It must considered as a package: the critical issues of selection, process and term, mandate and fair distribution. Simply put, the Senate election bill tries to skirt around the Constitution and haphazardly elect senators while still doing nothing to improve the representation of British Columbia and Alberta in Canada's Senate. It also fails to provide any kind of dispute mechanism should there be a deadlock between the House of Commons and the Senate.

I want to come back to process. At the end of the day, the tactic of the Prime Minister is a process that implies democracy but really is anything but. No better example is the undemocratic process that the Prime Minister managed to follow on the Canadian Wheat Board file.

Let me make a point in terms of what the Prime Minister considers democratic. He initiated his constitutional process by organizing a secret meeting in Saskatoon on July 25, 2006, to which only declared anti-Wheat Board individuals--

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I fail to see what issue the member for Malpeque is trying to raise. This has absolutely nothing to do with Senate reform, something that he has absolutely no clue about how to get anything done.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I will remind the member for Malpeque to try to keep his remarks as close as possible to the subject of the bill.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, in fact I will. I am talking about process and about the undemocratic actions of the Prime Minister.

He then set up a task force implementing marketing choice for wheat and barley dominated by well known anti-Wheat Board individuals. He ordered the Canadian Wheat Board to remove from its website its technical response to the task force report. He and his parliamentary secretary travelled the country bad mouthing the Canadian Wheat Board's marketing performance. By order in council he placed a gag order on the Canadian Wheat Board.

In the middle of farmer elections he took 16,000 members off the list. He removed or fired appointed Canadian Wheat Board directors including the CEO who had supported single desk selling. In conducting his barley marketing plebiscite, he refused to use the questions developed by the general farm community and conducted one without a public voter's list, a secret ballot, a clear statement of winning conditions or as--

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Peterborough.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, what can we say? Obviously, democracy and accountability do not matter to the Liberal Party. In fact, we can see following the speech from the hon. member that the culture of entitlement is alive and well over there because as long as it is okay for Liberal prime ministers to appoint bagmen and Liberal-friendly individuals and have them there until the age of 75, the Senate is just great. That is the way it should be.

My constituents do not think it is great. They think they should be consulted as to who should represent them in the Senate. I think every member of this House should support this bill because the people of Canada deserve to be consulted as to who should be in the Senate.

The hon. member knows that this is not a constitutional item whatsoever. He knows it is perfectly constitutional and he should support it. I bet the people of Prince Edward Island would like to have some say on who represents them in the Senate.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

I wonder if the member checked with the Prime Minister to see if it was all right for him to say that because those are the democratic principles that the leader of the governing party should go with over there.

If members go back to my remarks, they will see that I did not say the Senate was just great. There are problems with the Senate. I said the Liberal Party believes in Senate reform. But we also believe, in this party, that if we are going to do constitutional reform, we do it properly, not piecemeal.

Let me remind members again that I used the example of the Canadian Wheat Board, so that all Canadians could see how undemocratic were the actions of the Prime Minister.. There was no voters list. Can members imagine that? There were no real scrutineers. That is the way the government operates and that is the best example to show how absolutely undemocratic it is because it just believes in one thing, and that is, the Prime Minister's ideology. He really does not care what Canadians think.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I must say I am very surprised that a member who has been around as long as he has could misunderstand a bill and perhaps even misrepresent a bill as badly as the member did. Everybody knows that constitutional experts have openly said that this does not affect the Constitution at all. It does not take away any of the powers of the Governor General and, ultimately, it does not change any of the powers of the Prime Minister. All it does is ask folks on the ground, people in the member's own province, in the member's own riding, if they have an opinion as to who should represent them in the Senate.

The member mentioned we did not consult anybody. That is absolutely not true. This was brought up in the last election. We consulted all Canadians if they were interested in increasing the democracy around here and Canadians said yes. The Liberals said no.

I would like to ask the member if his party consulted anybody when it gutted health care? Did it consult anybody when it dismantled the military? Did it consult anybody on its failure on the environment? Did it consult anybody on that $2 billion it wasted on the gun registry? Did it consult anybody when it misplaced $1 billion in human resources? Who did it consult when it invented the sponsorship scandal?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, really, I should not have to answer this question. It is evidence from their tactics that instead of defending their bill and trying to point out the good points, I guess they cannot find any, the Conservatives go and attack things that happened over the years. I could get into each one of those points, but I do not intend to.

The fact of the matter is it was this party, it was the government of Jean Chrétien, that turned the finances of this country around. At the end of the day when government was turned over to that party, the Conservatives got the biggest surplus ever on a turnover of government and what did they do? What did the Minister of Finance do? He slashed social security programs for Canadians. Now they are back to regifting them a little, but they slashed. They are basically wasting that surplus, that good financial management, left to them by this side of the House.

Let us come back to the bill. The fact of the matter is that the House leader knows that these elections are non-binding on the Prime Minister and that he can still do as he pleases.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I am rather disappointed today that the debate has reached this level. For example, the hon. member for Peterborough referenced the recent appointment to the Senate of the bagman from Quebec. It is rather surprising because he has had an opportunity to run in two byelections since then, which he has not done. Then we hear the debate on the Wheat Board.

I know that eventually the government is going to try to get around the legislation dealing with the Wheat Board, but today we are talking about accountability in terms of what we are doing in the House. We have before us a bill that is 51 pages in length that talks about consultations.

We have to look at Alberta where a lot of this started. There was a senator appointed on the basis of consultations and a second one is waiting for Senator Hays to get old enough to retire. One wonders what the process is about. What percentage of the voting population in Alberta was actually involved with naming in terms of consultation?

The hon. member has brought up a lot of good points and I am also looking for an opportunity to bring some points forward, but I would like to reference the hon. member for Peterborough and his bagman from Quebec that was recently appointed to the Senate. Would the hon. member for Malpeque briefly give us his impressions about that appointment, a minister of the Crown in the Senate being a bagman from Quebec?

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Will all Liberal senators run in the next election? Is that your point?

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. The hon. member for Miramichi asked the hon. member for Malpeque a question, so I will let the hon. member for Malpeque answer the question.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I know why the member opposite is yelling. It is because he has egg on his face. The fact of the matter is the bagman from Quebec was appointed to the Senate.

However, worse yet, it was something the Prime Minister said he would never do. He appointed, as Minister of Public Works, a non-elected member, who was bagman for the Conservative Party in Quebec, to the Senate in a place where we on this side cannot put tough questions to the Minister of Public Works.

The fact of the matter is it is again a case of the Prime Minister saying one thing and doing another, and that is what worries Liberals about this particular bill. It is not binding.

The key point is this. The Constitution was put in place for specific reasons, that is to protect the foundation of our democracy and the rights of the two chambers. What the Prime Minister is doing through this bill in a very sneaky fashion is trying to use the negativity toward the Senate to make his point.

That is why members on the government side never talk about what the bill would really do. They just talk about the rhetoric, the Senate. Really, when one is making constitutional change, it should be done properly and not through manipulation and piecemeal fashion as the Prime Minister is trying to do.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the debate over the Senate is certainly getting vigorous. I listened to the hon. member as closely as I could. I did not want to listen too closely because I know that tomorrow he will have a totally different story on a totally different subject, and the next day it will be whatever direction the political wind is blowing.

I have a serious question for the hon. member for Malpeque. We have to look at Senate reform. We know what the challenges are with the Constitution. The reality is that it is going to be extremely difficult to reform the Senate. However, would the member for Malpeque consider an even Senate?

Never mind the difficulty of getting there with 10 senators, one from each province. Nova Scotia, P.E.I. and New Brunswick have a certain advantage now, but what would be wrong with equal representation for all provinces in the Senate? In reality, what would be wrong with that?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, why does the government not propose that? If that is where it wants to go, then why does it not propose it?

We would like, instead of this piecemeal approach, for the government to propose a real, long term solution. It should not do it in a piecemeal fashion by getting around the Constitution.

I might say this. The member knows that I am one member who does not change his story every day. I do not. Many in that party do.

The member mentioned that it is extremely difficult to change the Constitution, and that is true. I know it is even more difficult for the governing Conservative Party because it has never really managed to make some of the really difficult decisions. It was Prime Minister Trudeau who brought the Constitution home. It was the Liberals who made the hard decisions in terms of balancing the books, so that we could turn the country over in good financial shape to these folks. The bottom line question again is: why does the government not abide by constitutionality, have the proper discussions, and do--

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Simcoe North.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Fleetwood—Port Kells.

I am pleased to rise in the House in support of Bill C-43, a new bill to implement and improve the way in which worthy citizens can be considered for appointment to the other place in this Parliament. This has been a subject of great interest to the citizens of Simcoe North. Each chance I get I speak with them and from time to time they make it clear to me that the government needs to move in a direction away from the notions of governance around elitists and the privileged.

This bill is the second installation of our new government's sensible and incremental approach to making the Senate more accountable and democratic. It follows Bill S-4, a bill to limit Senate tenure which was referred to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs back in February.

The Prime Minister best expressed this initial two part process to improve our institutions in a speech he delivered in Ottawa on February 6. He spoke of Canadians' commitment to democracy being the wellspring of our success as a country. He reminded us that the scandals of the previous government had shaken Canadians' faith in our democracy. He expressed the hope that public apathy and cynicism should diminish as the memory of those scandals do also.

The Federal Accountability Act has already gone a long way to restoring public trust in Canada's government, but we know there is much more to be done. For our government that means modernizing the upper house by setting fixed terms for senators and by finally giving Canadians a say in who represents them in the red chamber.

It turns out that Bill C-43 on Senate appointment consultations, while separate and distinct, actually complements the aims of Bill S-4 in bringing practical and important steps in achieving Senate reform.

This sentiment was best expressed by the several witnesses to the Senate Special Committee on Senate Reform. In its first report in October 2006 the committee echoed the need for additional legislation on advisory elections to smooth and improve the effect of fixed terms for senators. This is a natural fit for the direction we are heading in to make the Senate more reflective of the will of Canadians, by allowing citizens to express their opinion for Senate appointments and by limiting the term for which senators would serve.

One of the witnesses to the special committee, Mr. Gordon Gibson, summed it up well when he stated that the Senate “would be unacceptable without term limits”, but that it was equally clear to him that term limits are “unacceptable without an electoral system”.

In the last 139 years there have been no less than seven different resolutions and proposed reforms to improve the process of selecting senators, the first as early as in 1874, only seven years after Confederation. Of course with the exception of the 75 year age limit that came in in 1965, all of those measures failed. The essence of these improvements was to recognize that modern democratic institutions must be products of the people they represent. In fact the notion of having important offices in our democratic systems remain appointed as opposed to elected is completely at odds with the contemporary understanding of governance and the democratic values of Canadians.

Witnesses at the Senate Special Committee on Senate Reform argued broadly that to be effective within a democratic process the Senate requires the legitimacy that would be provided by elections. One of the other witnesses, John Whyte, senior fellow at the Saskatchewan Institute of Public Policy, noted, “The case for Senate reform is overwhelming. Political power in legal democracies is accountable power”. He went on to argue that having unelected senators undermines the Senate in four ways. First, it does not reflect democratic choice. Second, it receives minimal public attention. Third, it exacerbates the confusion about who senators really represent. Fourth, it leaves senators unaccountable to Canadians for the work that they do.

We are proceeding prudently and sensibly without opening up an exhaustive and intractable constitutional negotiation. This is an achievable approach to meaningful Senate reform that can become the foundation for broader discussions on constitutional reforms to the Senate in the future.

On that note, I would like to remind hon. members that this bill does not require a constitutional amendment. It retains the powers of the Governor General to appoint, and the powers of the Prime Minister to recommend senators. However, the Prime Minister is allowed to consult in making Senate appointments, and who better to consult on this issue than Canadians themselves? The bill creates an objective and modern mechanism for the Prime Minister to do just that, to engage Canadians in consultation.

I would like to take a moment to point out some of the features that I think make this bill so relevant, flexible and practical. First, as I mentioned before, there is no constitutional amendment required.

Second, the voting procedure recommends that Canadians vote for senator nominees, likely during a federal general election, but the flexibility is there for a provincial election as well. This makes the process efficient and less costly.

Third, the voting for senator nominees is proposed to employ a single transferable ballot, also known as a preferential ballot, so the voters can express their first, second and so on preferences for Senate nominees.

This voting system has the added benefit of playing down the partisanship component of Senate nominees, leaving Canadians to consider not just the party affiliation of the nominee, but also his or her personal qualifications to fill that role.

We know the other place is supposed to be, as the preamble of the bill suggests, a chamber of independent, sober second thought, so Canadians expect the role of the parties to be less apparent in Senate deliberations. We also know that Canadians have expressed more than a little disdain at the Senate when senators take the partisanship arguments too far and ignore the will of the elected House of Commons. Regrettably we have seen too many examples of that, even recently, with Bill S-4, a two page bill which was adjourned and postponed day after day after day by the Liberal majority before it went to committee, I think some 260 days after it was first introduced in May last year.

This proposed consultation process speaks right to the heart of independent expression in the Senate. It will be a level playing field between independent and party sponsored senator nominees.

The fourth feature of the bill is the fact that this process adheres to the Canada Elections Act on the important tenets of financial administration, limits on advertising and the transparent reporting and auditing of financial records.

Of note is the upholding of an important standard that we adopted in the Federal Accountability Act to limit donations on election campaigns to $1,000 annually per individual and the banning of donations from corporations and unions. That said, and in respect to the expected costs of running a province-wide campaign, senator nominees will not be faced with an expense limit. This no expense limit feature, it should be pointed out, is still confined by the donation limit of $1,000 per individual.

This bill, an act to establish Senate consultations, call them advisory elections if you will, encompasses all of the right components to modernize our democratic systems in a practical and durable way.

The bill is separate but complementary to the aims of Bill S-4 to limit Senate tenure. It will strengthen our federation by making the upper house more accountable to the people and by enhancing the Senate's legitimacy and credibility as one of our cornerstone democratic institutions.

This bill delivers what is contemplated in its opening paragraph. It speaks to the importance of our representative institutions evolving in accordance with the principles of our modern democracy and the expectations of Canadians.

I want to close with just a few thoughtful words of one of our founding fathers, Sir John A. Macdonald, who, during the debates on Confederation, remarked on the Senate:

It must be an independent House, having a free action of its own...but it will never set itself in opposition against the deliberate and understood wishes of the people.

Bill C-43 delivers on the wishes of the people in a genuine and sensible way. Canadians finally will have a say on who sits in the Senate. I encourage all hon. members to support the bill.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Mr. Speaker, certainly we had a number of very good presentations. The hon. member has brought forward his support for the bill. We on this side of the House have some concerns. I would like to ask him a very basic question.

In Ontario very soon there will be a provincial election. We know that there may be vacant Senate seats in Ontario and according to the bill, anyone from North Bay to Ottawa would be able to put forward his or her name to become a senator. There could be 30 names on the list. The one who got the most support might have 7% of the votes that were cast, and maybe as in Alberta, only about 20% of the people would vote. How would this be a significant factor in terms of making a decision on behalf of the Prime Minister?

If a person from North Bay or any other place, let us say, Sioux Lookout, wanted to be a senator, how would that person contest this consultation to get a fair number of votes across the great province of Ontario? Would he or she be able to achieve his or her objective to become a senator?

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his very insightful and very specific question.

I did not get into the details in my remarks, but one of the features of this bill is the voting system. The voting system is done on a preferential ballot. If there were, as the member has cited, a large number of people running for just a few Senate seats in Ontario, the process envisages a preferential system where voters could indicate their first, second and third choices, and if none of the 30 nominees was successful on the first ballot, the proportion of ballots would then be considered in the second and third components, until eventually all those seats were filled. This is a modern proportional system. It is used in other democracies in other parts of the world, including Australia.

With regard to regional representation, nothing in this bill takes away the ability for the Prime Minister to ultimately make the decision about how those important regional representations should be taken into consideration.

I hope that answers the member's question.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I have a simple question for the member.

He very appropriately did not criticize the members of the Senate. A few members have spoken of the good work they do and I wonder if he could outline some of the good work that the Senate does.

While he is thinking of his answer, I want to say to westerners that they must be shocked, after hearing all the Conservatives talk about having an elected Senate, to find out that according to the bill the Prime Minister gets to make the decision. People could vote for whomever they want but the ultimate decision would still be made by the Prime Minister.

Once again the Senate has two huge functions, to represent the regions and minorities. This bill hurts those two functions of the Senate. It makes that less possible. Westerners must be shocked that there would be a bill that would hurt the west. The member used legitimacy and credibility going to the Senate because of this, which it will, but the west is under-represented and they have not fixed that first. This will hurt the west dramatically.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt that the work of the Senate has been important to this Parliament throughout history. There has also been since the early days an expression that the Senate needs to be reflective of the considerations of the public in making sure that their work is properly represented. We are working in that vein to move that along.

In terms of the previous member's question in regard to how this representation works, albeit it is a progressive and new approach to voting, but in fact no senator could ever be elected with such a small minority. I would say again to the member for Yukon that when it comes to actually considering those important considerations in the Senate with regard to representation, these would still be a factor. In fact the way this is envisaged, individual Canadians--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Fleetwood—Port Kells.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to express my thanks to the member for Simcoe North for sharing his time.

I am pleased to rise today, on behalf of the constituents of Fleetwood—Port Kells, to participate in the debate on Bill C-43, An Act to provide for consultations with electors on their preferences for appointments to the Senate.

The bill establishes a mechanism for consulting voters with respect to their preferences for the appointment of senators to represent their province or territory. The bill sets out the guidelines for electing Senate nominees. While it is not the full-fledged reform that many Canadians demand, Bill C-43 represents a practical and achievable step that provides significant and meaningful democratic reform. It may only be a small step, but it represents real change.

For too long, Canadians have been forced to settle for the status quo. Senators appointed largely on partisan grounds lack legitimacy and fail to act as regional spokespersons. It should therefore come as no surprise that Canadians want changes to the Senate. In fact, in poll after poll Canadians across the country have confirmed their support for Senate reform, including the election of senators.

In spring 2005, the Alberta Senate Reform Task Force found near unanimous support for the election of all future members of the Senate. A 2004 CTV poll asked Canadians “Do you want to elect your future Senators, yes or no?” Over 80% said yes. After the last federal election, an Environics poll done by the CBC found 71% of Canadians wanted to elect senators. Nearly one year ago, in June 2006, Ipsos Reid conducted a poll on Senate reform. Among reform alternatives given a plurality of Canadians, 44%, backed an elected Senate. Among British Columbians polled, more than 50% backed an elected Senate over other alternatives.

Despite lengthy debates and various attempts at reform, the Senate has remained essentially unchanged since its first sitting in November 1867.

In the late 1970s there were a number of proposals to turn the Senate into a house of the provinces. Drawing on the model of the German second chamber, it was argued that senators should be appointed by provincial governments.

In its 1984 report the Special Joint Committee on Senate Reform concluded that direct election would best achieve its primary objective of strengthening the Senate's capacity to fill its role of regional representation.

Prime Minister Mulroney tried to introduce changes to the Senate through the 1987 Meech Lake constitutional accord, which would have required Ottawa to fill Senate vacancies from a list submitted by the affected provinces, and through the 1992 Charlottetown accord, which proposed to give all provinces equal seats in the upper chamber and introduce elected senators, either by the province's electorate or legislative assembly. Both attempts to amend the Constitution failed, and since then Senate reform has largely been ignored.

The Prime Minister has observed that the all or nothing approach of previous governments to Senate reform has resulted in nothing. This is precisely the reason that Canada's new government has taken a fundamentally different route. We are pursuing a staged approach that will provide practical, sensible reforms which will build a foundation for more fundamental future reform.

As a first step, the government introduced legislation to limit the tenure of Senate appointments to eight years, rather than the current provisions whereby appointees can retain office until age 75. Changing the tenure of senators to eight years would enhance the legitimacy of the Senate and accordingly, enhance its role in providing sober second thought. Eight year terms would also provide a renewal of ideas and perspectives on a more regular basis.

Taken together with Bill C-43, the government is proposing real reform to the Senate. These changes may not meet all expectations, but they are achievable. If implemented, the bill will provide concrete results.

We cannot adopt sweeping Senate reform without constitutional amendments. More comprehensive change that will make the Senate an effective, independent and democratically elected body that equally represents all regions will require the consent of at least seven provinces representing 50% of the population. That is because comprehensive changes would alter essential characteristics of the Senate. This will obviously take more time.

Critics of this proposed legislation, notably Liberal senators, contend it is unconstitutional. However, the experts have spoken. Pre-eminent constitutional scholars agree with the government. Provided changes do not legally affect the role of the Governor General in making appointments, or the role of the prime minister in recommending them. There is nothing unconstitutional about this endeavour.

Bill C-43 does not affect either of these roles. It does not create a process for the direct election of senators. It does not change the constitutional qualifications of senators. In short, it does not affect any of the matters identified in subsection 42(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982 as requiring the so-called 7/50 amending procedure.

The prime minister is allowed to consult anyone in making Senate appointments. Bill C-43 simply provides a mechanism for him to hold a consultation with the citizens of Canada.

I applaud the government for taking this very important step to reform the way senators are chosen. It is an improvement that has the wholehearted support of my constituents. For far too long, Liberal politicians have told Canadians there was nothing that could be done to cure the democratic deficit in the Senate short of a constitutional amendment.

Canadians were not buying that excuse and neither are we. The government has taken a significant first step toward ensuring that this important democratic institution evolves in step with the expectations of Canadians.

The bill represents a significant improvement to the status quo and will provide a solid foundation for further reforms. I hope all members will support the initiative.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I have a simple question. I made remarks earlier that this is anything but democratic and anything but constitutional. The member for Fleetwood—Port Kells said that the government would be moving forward eventually with the effect of having an independent and democratically elected Senate.

Could the member tell us when her boss or when the Government of Canada is going to bring that total package forward? That is what we really need to see. We need to see a total package not a half-baked idea, and this legislation is clearly a half-baked idea that is not well thought out.

We have not debating the whole constitutionality around it. Could the member give us a timeframe of when the total package will be coming forward, or indeed is there one?

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Mr. Speaker, with this proposed legislation, our government is attempting to make the Senate more accountable and more democratic.

We are doing consultations with Canadians across the country. For the first time ever, Canadians will have a say in the selection of senators. The senate appointment consultations would give Canadians a voice in choosing who represents them in the Senate of Canada.

For years, Liberal politicians visiting my province only paid lip service to Senate reform. They acknowledged the popular support for change and voiced their agreement, but did absolutely nothing. The Liberal excuse has been that reform requires constitutional change so reform must be put off until Canadians are ready to open up the Constitution again. Liberals knew very well that Canadians had no appetite for constitutional reform, that people did not want a repeat of Meech Lake. This excuse served the Liberals very well.

Liberal prime ministers have had no interest in changing the Senate. It has worked very well for them also. They are happy with a system that has allowed them to appoint their cronies and hacks to the upper chamber. They asked why mess with a system that rewarded so many card holding Liberals?

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think I have entered a time warp. I can hear the same comments coming from the opposition that I am sure Prime Minister Robert Borden heard when he brought in voting rights for women. I am not sure the opposition actually said that was a half-baked idea. There was significant opposition, though.

I was hearing the same sort of comments when I closed my eyes and thought about John Diefenbaker bringing voting rights for the aboriginal community.

I appreciate the member's comments. Is this is a step in the right direction? Anything that moves the country toward greater democracy has to be something better than what the members opposite are calling half-baked, and how shameful.

The member mentioned a number of how many people in the last election supported Senate reform. I think she said it was 80% or somewhere in there. Could the member please refresh my memory on how many Canadians support this move?

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Mr. Speaker, what I will tell the member is we need an elected Senate. We need a democratic process in place. I am very proud of my government's achievements. It is the Conservative Party that gave women the right to vote. It is the Conservative party that gave aboriginals the right to vote.

I am sure it will be the Conservative Party that will put an elected Senate in place. An elected Senate is past due. Canadians want accountability and Senate reform is part of it.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to engage in this debate.

Members of the opposition have referred to former Prime Minister Diefenbaker. I cannot help but shake my head and think of former Prime Minister Diefenbaker, who believed in things like the Bill of Rights. He was a Progressive Conservative. To quote Danny Williams, he was not a “regressive Conservative” like the Reform-Alliance Conservatives are. I think that is important to point out to the House. I dare say that they should not be invoking the name of John Diefenbaker, who had an appreciation for rights.

A debate about the Senate was greatly advanced and put forward by the Reform Party. I remember how Preston Manning and the Reform Party were advocating for it, but the reality is that when they were talking about Senate elections, they talked about the three Es: elected, effective and equal.

But before I even get there, let me say that if we want to change the Constitution of Canada, this bill is trying to do it through the back door. The Senate is part of our Constitution. It is the chamber of sober second thought.

I must say that I have had occasion to plead my case with the Senate to defeat a government bill. I was a member of the government in the House of Commons and I went there with a colleague of mine from the Liberal Party as well as a colleague of mine from the Reform Party. Even though there was a majority of Liberal senators, they saw the wisdom of our appeal and held up a bad piece of legislation. I will be forever thankful for that. It certainly brought home to me the importance of having a Senate that is depoliticized as much as possible and indeed the importance of having a chamber of sober second thought.

We talk about going through the back door or doing it properly according to the Constitution. To amend the Constitution, which the bill essentially would require if it were to be meaningful, we need to have, according to section 38 of the Constitution, a resolution of the Senate and of the House of Commons and two-thirds of the provinces, seven having at least 50% of the population.

We know that Quebec and Ontario are opposed. Combined, they make up much more than 50% of the population. Further, I point out on the question of being equal that Alberta has 10.3% of the population of Canada, yet only 5.7% of the seats. British Columbia has 13.2% of the population of Canada but only 5.7% of the seats. In the case of the province of Ontario, it has 22.9% of the senators and over one-third of the population. How does it make sense to do an unconstitutional runaround on electing senators when a vote in British Columbia or Ontario or Alberta would be a very small fraction of the vote in other provinces?

I thought we generally agreed that there is agreement to having representation by population. This certainly does not address that. It is done very much in a piecemeal fashion.

I listened to the debate. I noted that the member for Cambridge said this was a great plan. Back during the time of the Meech Lake accord, the then premier of Ontario, Liberal David Peterson, made some comments about giving up some Senate seats from the province of Ontario. That suggestion did not go over well during the election campaign that followed shortly. The reason was that the people in Ontario did not want to see under-representation in the Senate made worse. The people of Ontario believe, as I dare say the people of Cambridge do, in representation by population.

This does not address that issue. As I said, it is piecemeal and it is through the back door. The fact of the matter is that because we cannot make these elections binding we depend on the Prime Minister to keep his word. I am sure all members of the House would agree, and all people involved in income trusts would agree, that this Prime Minister does not necessarily keep his word. He might keep it some of the time, but he surely does not keep it all of the time.

I think this whole issue of Senate reform, the issue that is masqueraded as Senate reform, is really dishonest, because it does not address the question as it goes to the very foundation of this country and our institutions. There is a way of properly doing constitutional reform. That is why we repatriated our Constitution. It was so we could do that here and not have to go to Westminster cap in hand. That was done on April 17, 1982.

That constitutional reform was done under the leadership of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Let me say that there was a great deal of consultation around the country. It was comprehensive. It got tested by the courts. It had the provinces onside. This bill does none of that.

I mentioned that the Prime Minister does not always keep his word. We all remember the election. As soon as the election was held, his word was broken when he appointed to the Senate the Minister of Public Works, who was not a member of the House of Commons and who was not elected to anything. Here we have one of our most sensitive portfolios in the Senate, and we in the House of Commons cannot ask questions of that minister. This is so very much a typically Conservative smokescreen and piecemeal optics.

May I say that when the member for Calgary East talked about the Liberals appointing their buddies to the Senate, Brian Mulroney, in his nine short years, appointed 57 senators. I really hope that the member for Calgary East gets the message.

I think I am hitting a nerve on the other side. Notwithstanding that the Reformers came up here and said they were going to engage in civil debate, those folks over there have forgotten all that, just as they have forgotten coming to the Parliament of Canada to represent their constituents.

I remember a time when I looked across the aisle and listened to the Reform Party members and the leader did not even sit in the first row. He sat in the third row. Eventually he moved up to the first row. I remember how for every vote before this chamber the whip for the Reform Party said, “Reform Party members are going to be voting this way”, except those members who had been instructed by their constituents to do the other.

We have come 180 degrees to the party that is now on that side. I note the member for Wild Rose. He remembers those days as well. I appreciated those days because it helped bring some reform into this chamber. The only problem was that as soon as those members got into government the heavy hand of dictatorial power from the Prime Minister came down, the likes of which Parliament has not seen in 50 years. It is just unbelievable. We have situations--

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, can you call for order?

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The rule of thumb is very easy. If I can understand the hon. member that I have recognized, then everything is fine, but if I cannot, then I must ask for the cooperation of all members, and this is what I am doing.

The hon. member for Kitchener—Waterloo.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I look back with fondness to the days when the Reform members were actually civil in this House and not using a mob-like mentality.

I want to get back to the Senate. If we were to have elected senators with votes that mean a lot more in one province than say in Alberta, British Columbia or Ontario, that would undercut representation by population. However, beyond that, it would give the Senate the kind of power that it does not have now.

One can just imagine what would happen to this chamber of democratically elected members from roughly equal constituencies, and I say roughly because we have some changes to make, and all of a sudden we have these bogus re-elected senators, who would not truly be recognized in the Constitution, holding up a bill of the House of Commons and not backing off when the House of Commons sends the bill back for the second time. The institution of the House of Commons then must prevail.

I mentioned that because this bill does absolutely nothing to deal with that issue.

I want to talk about a possible elected Senate that is amended by the Constitution and what I could support. I could support an elected Senate that is dealt with by the Constitution but that the powers of the Senate and the House of Commons must be very well defined. The ultimate authority of the House of Commons must prevail.

We also need to find a way of reflecting minorities in our country who might not be represented in the House. We must ensure that the Senate has the kind of knowledge base that is not necessarily reflected in this House. We need people from the arts and people with great expertise from social services, social sciences and the hard sciences. We also need to ensure we have people like Senator Roméo Dallaire who has expertise in the military. Those types of people are very important.

However, when we put that package together we must do it within the confines of the Constitution. Otherwise, as the premier of the province of Ontario said, to do otherwise would have the province of Ontario calling for the abolition of the Senate which, in the end, would be a mistake.

I would challenge members opposite to go back to Alberta, to go back to their constituencies in Ontario or to go back to their constituencies in British Columbia and ask their constituents if they think it is fair that their province is under-represented. I do not think the members will be surprised by the reactions they get. I believe the people will say that they think it is unfair and that if we are to have elections, we need to have a Senate based on representation by population.

The Senate has worked well for the most part because it has tried to be non-partisan as much as possible given the fact that Brian Mulroney appointed 57 senators and given the fact that most senators are political appointments.

However, I can say that the decorum in the House of Commons could do well to look to the decorum in the Senate. The displays and discourtesies that we have in the House, such as those afforded by the member for Cambridge, do not represent the kind of behaviour they have in the Senate.

If we want a Senate that is partisan and a Senate that does not work as effectively and efficiently as it does now, then we would want to pass this bill. However, I think most Canadians, on a sober second thought, not a knee-jerk reaction to a particular poll that might be done in the same fraudulent way as the consultation on the Wheat Board was done, would want us to leave well enough alone.

I know former Premier Peterson of the province of Ontario quickly learned that Senate seats are not given away for the province of Ontario, particularly when it is under-represented.

We should not be having this debate because what we are debating is a way to go around the Constitution. The reason we have a Constitution is because we consulted widely with all the stakeholders. Constitutional change is not easy but if we are going to amend the Constitution of this country, we need due diligence and a comprehensive approach where the problems are thought out and term limits are actually looked at.

I know there is debate on having term limits of 8 years, 12 years or 15 years. If, at the end of the day, our aim is to make the Senate as non-partisan as possible, a Senate that manages from time to time to do great work, then we would not want a senator having to run in an election every eight years. We might want the appointment to be for a longer term of maybe 12 to 15 years. If we were to do that, then we would ensure that the people have the background, the expertise and the experience in the Senate to make it happen.

It should come as no surprise to the government that Bill C-43 will be defeated because it does not have the support of the House. I will be looking forward to voting against the bill when the time comes.

[Myron Thompson, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I kind of remember one thing the member said in his speech but most of his speech was pretty bungled up. I do not even know if he knew for sure what he was talking about. However, he made a couple of comments about the days when the Reform came in and he was right on. I do not think I have changed since 1993 when I came in as Reform member.

However, when we arrived here there were a couple of things we recognized. First, Brian Mulroney was the first prime minister to appoint an elected senator, Stan Waters. Stan Water was a Reformer. Is that not amazing? Brian Mulroney belonged to a different party but he appointed the choice of the people.

We then had to wait a long number of years until we finally got the present Prime Minister who once again has appointed another great Canadian, Bert Brown, to the Senate. Those are people who were elected.

During those 14 Liberal years, I will bet a dollar to a doughnut that if I heard it once I heard it a thousand times coming from the Liberal benches that we should elect our senators. They actually said that in conversations outside and all around. The Liberal members of the caucus, through those years, said that it was a good idea to elect members to the Senate.

I cannot believe what I am hearing today. What happened to the good old Liberals who were here back in the days when the good Reform were here? What kind of a change have they had that they would do that?

I can go through a whole list of boondoggles that started changing the trend of thought in this place, all the way to Gomery through to the cancellation of the helicopters, time after time after time. It is no wonder we lose our decorum in this place when we find out about the billions of dollars that the people over there, when they were in charge, did.

I would ask the member to reconsider, to go back to the Liberal thinking that I heard in the early years of Reform, that an elected Senate is a good idea.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member must imagining things if he thinks he heard me talking about an elected Senate. I have never talk about an elected Senate.

I am glad the member for Wild Rose cited some examples where Conservative prime ministers appointed Liberals to the Senate. I must say that our last Liberal prime minister appointed a senator, Mr. Hugh Segal, to the Senate.

The member talks about a number of things. He did not answer the question which I raised in my speech as to what happened to voting for one's constituents that the member and all the Reformers were so keen on. That has disappeared. We even had a situation where a minister of the Crown, the member for Wellington—Halton Hills, because the Prime Minister announced a policy to recognize the Québécois as a nation, resigned his seat in this House because he was not allowed to come into this House and vote his conscience.

When I was in a similar situation and resigned as parliamentary secretary, there was never a question that I would come into this House and vote against the legislation.

The member mentions Gomery--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Cambridge.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am not really sure where to begin here. I am getting the impression that the member has no support for democracy whatsoever. The member mentions things that are advantageous to him, depending on the argument that he presents.

The member loves history. He was talking about the Reform Party. I will not mention what that member said at the University of Waterloo regarding an ethnic group. I will mention that the member walked into a function yelling and screaming because the audience there was representing and exercising their right to freedom of speech and he yelled against it.

The member is not interested in democracy. He is interested in anything away from election and democracy. He talks about listening to constituents. I want to remind the House that it was that member who was here during the Gomery scandal. It was that member who was here during sponsorship. It was that member who was here during the boondoggle. It was that member and his party who have gotten us to the point that has created the appetite for Senate reform through their partisan political manoeuvring.

The member brags about not voting with his government and not supporting his leader. Why would the people in his riding vote for him if he cannot even support his own party?

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I hope you will give me as much time to answer as the member got to ask questions. Let me say to the member--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Order, please. In fairness, the hon. member should already know that I am giving two minutes per question and two minutes per answer.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be quick. Cheap politics and slander will get the member nowhere.

In terms of being elected by my constituents, I have been elected five times with bigger numbers each time.

The member talks about Gomery. Let me talk about the eight cabinet ministers and MPs that in nine years were fined and convicted, some went to jail, under the Mulroney government.

He talks about Gomery. Let me talk about the book On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years. The former Prime Minister was talking about patronage appointments and he said he was going to clean it up. Then he went to the Conservative meetings and was going to appoint everybody a senator or a judge. He said that eventually he would appoint a Liberal, but it was only after he appointed every living, walking Conservative. That is found in the book--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Order, please. The hon. member for Kitchener—Waterloo should know that when the Speaker stands, he sits down.

I hope that the hon. member for St. Catharines is rising on a point of order and not a point of debate.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

First, the member is using a prop in the House. Second, he is not even speaking to the topic that he originally started out with respect to his speech, and third, he never even answered--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Order. When the Speaker stands up, the hon. member sits down.

The hon. member for Kitchener—Waterloo was not using a prop. He had a book in his hand from which he was reading.

The hon. member for Yukon should note there are two minutes left, one minute for the question and one minute for the response.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I want to quickly tame this down a bit.

Three of the newer Conservative members suggested the bill had to come forward because of partisanship in the Senate. Because the member has been here longer than most of us, I would like him to explain how the Senate is much less partisan than the House. In committee, senators are much less partisan and that is a benefit. Perhaps the members opposite should take that lesson from the Senate.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, may I say to my colleague and all members of the House that when I disagreed with a government bill strongly enough, I went with a Reform member and a Liberal member up to the Senate, to the committee dealing with the citizenship issue, and the Conservatives and Liberals all agreed with me on that committee. They would not let the bill come out of committee because they thought it was bad legislation that should be improved. I cannot point to a better example of having a chamber of sober second thought.

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a real pleasure to stand in the House again and support Bill C-43, the Senate appointment consultations act. It is also a pleasure to split my time today with the member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound.

Our government is proposing to make a series of reforms to make the Senate more democratic and accountable. This bill details to Canadians how they would be able to play a role in selecting the senators who will represent them and their region. Senate appointment consultations would give Canadians a voice in representation and Canadians are asking for it.

We believe, and the people I represent in Crowfoot, Alberta, believe that this is a practical and achievable step. It provides significant and meaningful democratic reform. The type of reform, to be quite honest, that is supported by most Canadians and the type of reform that looking across is very much needed.

We promised in the last election and in the Speech from the Throne that we would take a step by step approach to reforming the Senate. We can take real action in improving the credibility and legitimacy of the Senate without embroiling this government and Canadians in constitutional negotiations.

Our approach includes the practical and meaningful steps of introducing term limits for senators, which is Bill S-4, and consulting Canadians about their preferences for who would represent them in the Senate, which is Bill C-43, the bill we are debating today.

As an Alberta member of Parliament, I can assure the House that we do know something about senatorial elections and something about the Senate of Canada. In 1989 Alberta first used an election to decide a Senate nomination. The prime minister of the day then appointed the winner of that election, Stan Waters, to the upper house in 1990. I was involved at that time and I can tell the House that Alberta was excited about Senator Waters coming to this place and representing Albertans. He represented all Canadians very well.

People in the province of Alberta, British Columbia, and in fact throughout all of western Canada, were very pleased by the way Senator Waters represented them. He toured all of Canada and told Canadians about the need for senatorial reform.

When the Liberal government returned to power in 1993, there was no more progress in terms of bringing democracy and accountability to the upper chamber. It came to a grinding halt with that Liberal regime.

Since 1993 the federal Liberal Party has named none of those Canadians who put their name forward for Senate elections or those who have been duly elected. This is a shame because provinces for the most part are willing to do the work to get better representation in the Senate. Average Canadians who are engaged in this discussion want to be involved in the process of who will represent them in the Senate.

In 2006 the Conservative Party of Canada came to power. This government has taken the first opportunity to appoint a senator endorsed by Canadian voters. Our Prime Minister announced that Bert Brown, a constituent of mine, would take a seat in the Senate when a seat becomes vacant this summer and become known as senator Brown. Albertans are pleased with that announcement. I had the pleasure of having dinner on Saturday evening with Bert and Alice, Betty Unger, and a number of others.

No Canadian has done as much to advance the cause of senatorial reform as Bert Brown. He has been a tireless advocate for the democratization of the upper house over two decades. He ran in three Alberta Senate elections and is the only Canadian to be elected twice as a senator-in-waiting.

In short, he is a very patient individual when it comes to becoming a Senator, but he is also a perfect role model for elected senators. Mr. Brown, 69, is a farmer from Balzac, Alberta. He is currently a Calgary area zoning and property development consultant. He is also a constituent of mine. That is why again I commend him and I speak about him with great fondness.

Over 300,000 Albertans voted for him in the province's 2004 Senate election. That is 300,000. More Albertans voted for Bert Brown than all Liberal candidates put together in my province in the last general election. Yet, the party opposite asks: which Albertans actually voted for him? Well, 300,000, which is many more than those who voted for all the Liberals combined.

The Senate of Canada was to be an upper chamber for regional representation. It used to be that the senators met in groups in the regions they represented. They would come together based on their region and they would have what we could call a mini-caucus meeting. There was no real special attention paid to a senator being Independent, Liberal or Conservative. Senators were more concerned about the region that they represented. They were concerned about working together to help their region.

Nowadays, the upper chamber is fraught with partisanship. Senators meet in political party caucuses each week. The Senate chamber is to a great deal about party politics. The Senate needs to be reformed.

The House of Commons is supposed to be political. Canadians hope that the Senate would become more independent, more perhaps intellectual, checking the work of the House and helping the House pass good legislation. Senators would actually ask how is this going to affect my region, not necessarily how is this going to play out in my political party.

For a long time, decades, the Senate has posed problems that the average Canadian voters wished that we would address and that we would fix. Canadians have been told that we cannot fix this problem. Canadians have been told by the Liberals and others that we do not want to touch it because we would have to change the Constitution and that we do not want to get into constitutional wrangling again.

Bill C-43 does not require constitutional change. It does not affect the Governor General's power to appoint. It does not affect the Prime Minister's responsibility or power to recommend senators. It does not create a process for the direct election of senators. It does not change the constitutional qualifications of senators.

In short, it does not affect any of the matters that are identified in the Constitution and so this is a process that is achievable. It is a small step. It is a first step and one that we should be grabbing onto.

Constitutional scholars agree that the government's approach is constitutional because we do not legally affect the role of the Governor General in making those appointments or the role of the Prime Minister.

Canadians may not know that our Prime Minister is allowed to consult anyone in making Senate appointments. Bill C-43 provides a mechanism for him to hold a consultation with the citizens of Canada and generally speaking in each province when a vacancy comes he can consult. The governor in council can make an order for a consultation which will be carried out under the direction of the Chief Electoral Officer. The order may specify the provinces and territories in which the consultation is to be held. The Prime Minister has the opportunity then to do this.

I see that you are telling me that my time is up, Mr. Speaker, so I will bring my comments to a close. Sometimes when we are elected to the House, we believe that we can come in and make major changes immediately. I think as time goes on we realize that we must become satisfied with small incremental steps.

I think this step will enhance the legitimacy, the credibility of the Senate. We have one party that wants the abolition of that. I think if the Senate became more involved in regional representation, it would help. I believe we need this process. I will always support Canadians making the decision as to who best represents them.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to note that the bill was brought first to our House December 13. Those of us who saw it at that time wondered if it would ever come back. However, it is back today.

There seems to be some degree of apology from the government that it brought it back to the House for further consideration, hoping for it to go to committee. However, when I listen, I am afraid I hear some members opposite saying they are dissatisfied with some of the senators sitting in the room just across the way from us.

First, the member for Crowfoot says “if the provinces are willing”. Could he explain that? It is my impression that at least two of the major provinces do not want to hear about the bill. Second, could he give us the names of the constitutional scholars who believe this bill is constitutionally correct?

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, first, do I have the specifics as to those constitutional experts? No. However, a number of constitutional experts have said that if we are to move in these kinds of steps, in these small incremental steps, that we are allowed to do that. Indeed, we have already seen the constitutionality of it in the fact that former Prime Minister Mulroney appointed Stan Waters to the Senate.

Does the prime minister have the ability to consult with who would best represent them? Yes. Does that consultation, like the old Liberal ways, have to be with just the Liberal boys in the back room or can it be with all the province as a whole? Our argument is the prime minister can make that consultation with whom he or she wants. Our Prime Minister has said very clearly that the ones he takes his marching orders from are the people, the citizens, the voters. That answers the question.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague was a Reformer, as I was at one time. I want to ask my friend a couple of simple questions.

How does he reconcile in his own heart a Prime Minister and a leader who has taken the public service and removed them from the equation of effectively having input into government public policy, a Prime Minister who has chosen to muzzle his cabinet, muzzle his MPs and muzzle the media, all of which are violations of the essence and the pillars of an effective democracy?

How does my hon. friend reconcile in his own heart, as a Reformer, as somebody who wants to reform the system to make it more democratic and accountable to the Canadian public, a system where the Canadian people have input into public policy, the current situation he finds himself in, with a Prime Minister who is a follower of Leo Strauss?

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I just want to go back to a question, in fairness to the person who asked this earlier. There are a number of people, Patrick Monaghan and Peter Hogg, constitutional scholars, who agree with this. There are two names, and there are a number of others who do.

I do not agree with the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, respectfully, who says that we are being muzzled, that this Prime Minister is somehow telling us when we can stand up and sit down and say this and say that. That is not the case.

The Prime Minister is one who has always encouraged us to represent our constituents, to go out and listen to what they have to say. We go back on a weekly basis, and many times the Prime Minister has encouraged all of us to listen, not so much the talk, talk, talk we are used to from the Liberal side, but the listen, listen, listen to the constituents, to the people we represent.

The member across the way made mention that at one point in time he was a Reformer. He was a Canadian Alliance member at one point in time as well. I am not certain if he ever lasted long enough to be Conservative of Canada. When it comes to what he sees on this side, he sees a government that is effective, a government that is united, a government that is working for the betterment of Canadians and a government that wants accountability and democratization of the Senate.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure for me today to stand in the House to speak to Bill C-43, the Senate appointment consultations act.

The most important thing about the bill is that it is about democracy, democratic reform, something of which we can all agree. I know the Canadian public agree that we could use a lot more in this great building. It is long overdue.

When we talk about democratic reform, I will give some examples. It baffles me why the opposition across the way have these cold feet and great fear of democratic reform. In an example that did not happen too many years ago, there were some changes made where senators were limited to the age of 75. Some other democratic reform was that they had to attend some meetings, instead of being in Florida or Mexico.

Rome was not built in a day and neither will some of the reforms we need in the country. This is just another one in a list of keeping that reform going.

The bill is also about accountability. It is about giving people a voice in selecting their senators. It is also something the government believes is a practical and very achievable step toward significant democratic reform.

In my riding of Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, 86% of people who responded to a question in one of my householders said that they wanted to see an elected Senate. There was also a number in there who wanted to see it totally abolished, but I do not support that. However, some people do because of some of the things that went on over the years. I figure if we get the right kind of reforms in this place and in the other house, we will go a long way to appeasing some of those people.

Although Bill C-43 is not totally about the election of senators, if passed, the bill will provide the type of democratic reform that is supported, as I said, by my constituents, and I believe most Canadians. Canadians will have a say in who will represent them in the Senate.

Bill C-43 is one of the reforms that can generate momentum on comprehensive change to the Senate. The bill does not require any constitutional change and political parties would have more of a limited in relation to the political financing of Senate nominees. Parties would not control the order of the candidates on the ballot, which is a good thing, and voting would also be for individual candidates.

Furthermore, the bill recognizes that citizens, not political friends or big donors to the prime minister are in the best position to advise the prime minister about the people who should speak on their behalf in this great institutions.

We know Canadians think it is time to act on this idea. Canadian voters would be able to indicate their preferences regarding which potential Senate nominees they would like to see represent their provinces or territories.

I would like to thank my colleague, the member for Crowfoot, for sharing his time with me. He spoke about the great Senator from Alberta. Albertans are away ahead of the rest of the country in electing senators and pinpointing who they would like to represent them. Every province and territory should have that same kind of process.

The single transferable vote allowed for in the bill would allow Canadians to rank their preferred Senate nominees in order of preference. They can rank them one, two, three or as many as they see fit. The system is very adaptable in that where there are many vacancies in a province, it provides proportionality in the results.

If there is only one vacancy, the system requires a successful nominee to receive a majority on the vote. How can we argue with that process? What is wrong with it? I cannot think of a valid reason why anyone in the House could argue that point.

Bill C-43 is about consultations and information gathering. The prime minister can consult anyone in making Senate appointments and the bill would provide him or her a mechanism to hold a consultation with Canadians.

Bill C-43 follows through on the promise made to the people of Canada by the government in the recent Speech from the Throne where it said,

—explore means to ensure that the Senate better reflects both the democratic values of Canadians and the needs of Canada's regions.

The bill would provide the country with a revised Senate, with a truly national democratic institution. There is no reason for this bill not to pass. In fact, it should pass unanimously.

I call on all members of the House to clear their minds of all partisan cobwebs and to support the bill.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if the member understands the bill. I have no big problem with an elected Senate. I think Senate reform is a good idea. I think proportionality and representation are all good ideas, but I do not know that they can be done piecemeal.

The member said that when we have one Senate vacancy, there would be an election with a transferable ballot, a preferential ballot, not the first past the post. If we look at a province like Ontario and consider that the government is advancing two bills, one for fixed terms limiting the terms at eight years and another one for elected senators, we would have to calculate that every four years we would have at least 12 or 13 senators to be elected.

Presumably we would not have one a month or every two months. We would have these all at the same time. If we had a dozen senators and if it is split every four years for an election, then we would have a minimum of 12 people. If we want to set the selection of the three preferred ones, we would have to be voting for 36 people, I would presume, or a long list of people. It seems to me like a complicated and convoluted process.

In a province like Ontario, how would anybody from any of the regions outside Toronto ever get elected?

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for what looks like support for Senate reform. That is good to hear.

When it comes to reforming the Senate, there are further changes I personally would like to see. I ask my colleague across the way to support the government in getting those. In the meantime the indication has been that they will not support the full changes needed for Senate reform.

What we do, like the government did a few years ago when it made the reform changes in as far as limiting the age and making one sit at meetings, is some reform a little at a time. It is not the way we all want to maybe see it happen, but we are trying do a little at a time.

I look very forward to the final vote on this and to see the members support it. I hope the member will be persuaded and that the rest of his colleagues will do the same thing.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound for his enlightening comments. Finally, we are hearing some reason in this debate because what we are hearing from the opposition parties is completely ludicrous.

We know people across the country want to see Senate reform. They have been talking about it. It is ranking higher and higher in opinion polls, but yet we are hearing from the opposition party that it is not going to support the bill. We found out today that the Liberal dominated Senate will not support Bill S-4 to bring about term limits into the Senate.

Why does my colleague think the opposition parties are not supporting democratic reform in the Senate and ensuring we bring modernization into this institution?

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do not like to speculate in this place, but I will use accountability, for an example.

It is something that should have been passed. We all want accountability, at least one would think that we all would in the House. A very simple act should have taken no time at all. While I forget the exact amount of time, it was almost an embarrassment to that great institution over there how it was dragged and drawn out. I do not know whether that is the reason they do not want to see, as long as we are in government, things improve over there. I have no idea.

I know previously a colleague from British Columbia over there talked about the leadership. I know my colleague from Selkirk—Interlake and I are proud to stand behind our leader. I am sure that hon. colleague from British Columbia wishes he was still over here.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Miramichi has the floor for 10 minutes, of which half will be today, and he will be interrupted at 6:30 p.m..

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Mr. Speaker, it is certainly interesting to hear what is projected for the House with this bill. I know Conservative Party members have problems because when they established themselves as the new Conservative Party, even within the Senate, some Progressive Conservative senators did not want to join the new establishment. So even within the Senate itself I know they perceive some problems with who they think supports them in the Senate.

I am a member from New Brunswick, a region of Canada which has 10 senators. We have to look back at the Constitution of this country whereby Atlantic Canada, the maritime provinces were provided with 24 senators, in other words at that time one-quarter of the Canadian Senate. Over the last 140 years numerous changes have occurred within Canada. We hear people speak about the need to make some changes to the Senate, but I have always been proud of the Senate. In fact when I went home this past weekend I heard as many people criticize this House as I went around the streets of my constituency as I did those who might want to criticize the Senate.

When we look at bills like this and the accountability bill that is tied in with this one, we have to wonder how accountable we are to the people of Canada when we spend the whole day talking about Bill C-43. It is 51 pages long and my impression is that I am disappointed if our justice department wrote this piece of legislation. If the justice department did write it, there certainly must have been a lot of instructions from somebody who had some very different ideas on how the future of our Senate should be determined.

The House of Lords in Britain at the present time is undergoing some changes. Certain restrictions are being placed upon the future of that house. Who should be members of the House of Lords in the future is a matter of great debate within the British parliament .

Two houses are part of our federal system. Each house reflects different ideas, different backgrounds, different concerns. When I heard today about setting up a consultation process, it is simply an attempt by the Prime Minister and the Conservative government to get around what really should be the Constitution of our country. They want to rely on a complicated system of people in an election giving preferences and a long list of who might be a senator in that particular province or region.

I have not heard, for example, a comparison to the United States Senate where each state has two senators. We should look at the costs of running for the U.S. Senate and what the people of Canada might spend on getting a consultation process that might be used for the Prime Minister to appoint somebody to the Senate.

We had a recent debate on justice and the appointments to the judicial system. Will the next step be to have elections of judges as they have in some countries, in fact in parts of the United States? Maybe that is the next step the government is considering.

In my own province recently, talking about the concept of offering party followers some of these appointments, we have had three judicial appointments recently. One was a former leader of the Conservative Party in New Brunswick. Another was the chief organizer for the government and that party in the last federal election. The third one has very close ties to a former member of Parliament.

[Jim Flaherty, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

These are qualified people.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

I wonder where we are coming from in terms of openness, in terms of providing a better government for this country.

Mr. Speaker, I see I have roused a little bit of concern on the other side when I bring those points forward. I think I may have to stop because someone's jacket is on the floor, who is going to step on it? Back home when people talk tough talk like that, they throw their coat on the floor and someone jumps on it.

[Jim Flaherty, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

That is so low. These are qualified people. You should be ashamed of yourself.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

But these Irish. I have Irish friends and they always attempt to show their real strength.

I am sorry if the hon. member wants to interrupt me on something different.

[Jim Flaherty, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

Shame.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a shame when the Minister of Finance wants to interrupt somebody on a different issue from what I was talking about. It is a shame. He should apologize to the hon. member from Nova Scotia and not try to disrupt this House.