Thank you, Madam Chair.
I have a question, but first I want to briefly comment on the initial comments Mr. Murphy made. He made an observation that I think roughly translates as saying that we can't rely upon electorates to vote for people who aren't members of whatever the local majority population is. He gave the example of it being unlikely that New Brunswickers would vote for senators who were members of that province's francophone minority, because the province has an anglophone majority.
I just note, for the historical record, that the province did of course elect—it must be 35 or maybe 40 years ago—Louis Robichaud as premier. He of course was a member of the Acadian minority. And he actually was not a one-off in that regard, either. So this does happen.
By the same token, my colleague Mr. Lauzon, a franco-Ontarian, is in a riding that's more than half anglophone. My colleague Mr. Mark is from Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, a riding in which the majority of the population most emphatically is not Chinese-Canadian. Brian Mulroney was elected and is of course an anglophone representing a virtually homogenous francophone riding.
So there is precedent to suggest that in democracies, people will often vote for the best representative, without regard to their ethnic or other characteristics. That's just an observation.
The question I actually have is on an entirely different matter. Mr. Newman raised an interesting constitutional issue, and that is that the government currently has two pieces of Senate-related legislation before the House of Commons. One is the matter we're dealing with now, and it's ordinary legislation. One is a proposal to have eight-year terms for senators, and that is being dealt with as a section 44 amendment.
I just wonder if we could have a brief explanation as to why one path has been chosen for one of those pieces of legislation and the other path has been chosen for the other piece of legislation.