Thank you for that.
I have to admit that confirms an impression I've had as well, that the Senate is a pretty partisan place already.
I wanted to ask you as well about a piece of proposed legislation that has come up through the Senate. It's now been passed by the Senate, and I believe Mr. Murphy is intending to sponsor it in the House of Commons when it makes its entry there--Bill S-224. That's the bill that would require, after a Senate seat falls vacant, the Prime Minister to propose a qualified replacement essentially within six months.
Maybe I'll just tell you what my assessment of this bill is. I think if this bill goes forward and is passed, it will have the effect of killing any opportunity either to reform the Senate, to elect it, or even, as a practical matter, to try to work on getting rid of it, as the New Democrats propose, simply because it's going to push the government into filling all those vacancies. And they're going to be given a choice. They can fill them with Conservatives, in which case the Prime Minister will be forced to engage in the same partisan process and will be attacked as a hypocrite and so on, and will be forced to defend that position, or they'll have to appoint it with some mixture of Conservatives and Liberals, given the fact that the New Democrats and Bloc are presumably going to be unwilling to provide candidates. So it seems to me this is intended to effectively derail any move to democratize the Senate.
I wonder if you share my assessment or if you have a different assessment of the bill.