Yes, through the chair again, Mr. Reid, I actually wrote a brief amendment to Bill S-224, suggesting that instead of forcing the vacancies to be filled on a specific timetable, they be filled after a consultative process with the provinces, making it as simple as I could while still reaching out to democracy.
I guess the one thing I'd say about Bill S-224 is that if it reaches approval in both Houses, I'm not sure it can be enforced. I went to the parliamentary library, which I found to be my biggest source of information since I've come here, and found that there have been vacancies as long as eight years. Manitoba actually holds the record. There have been a number of them at seven years and there have been many at six. There have been, I think, some down at 405 days, less than two years, but precedence is what runs our Constitution in many ways. The reason I say that is that there's no constitutional reference for the Prime Minister to appoint senators. It's the Governor General, if I may try to quote word for word:
The Governor General shall from time to time...summon qualified persons to serve in the Senate....
--to represent the provinces in the following numbers, and it goes on to list all those.
But I don't hold much more hope out for S-224 than I do for Bill C-20 in its current form. I think if we could talk about the fact that senators would like to accommodate something in terms of a 12-year maximum term and we could accommodate democracy by having an amendment that would allow for two six-year terms, we would have something spectacular for this country.