Thanks, Mr. Chair.
This is ground that we've harrowed several times now. One assertion that the Conservatives are making here—I won't belabour the point—is that the Senate should pass legislation that has been duly passed by the House of Commons. That is an assertion that I wholly support. Our party, as many folks will know, doesn't support the notion of having an unelected Senate at all.
Perhaps I can pose this through you, Mr. Chair, to my Conservative friends. I would just hope, for the sake of consistency, if in the future when other legislation is duly passed by the House of Commons on any topic, they would also vote for similar motions that call on the Senate to swiftly pass the legislation that we, as the House of Commons, passed.
If we look at the history of the place, that hasn't been a consistently applied philosophy. If it's good for one bill, it's good for another bill. Maybe where we find common ground is the idea that the Senate should swiftly pass legislation that goes through the people's House and is carried by a democratic vote by democratically elected representatives.
I think that's something that all of us around the table would come around to, yet we see that, instead, there is this game-playing that happens. When there are bills that some parties don't like, they try to tie them up or kill them in the Senate, and when there are bills that they do like, they impress upon the Senate the urgency of passing them as quickly as possible.
If I were a member of the public watching these deliberations, I would note the lack of consistency—I'll just call it a lack of consistency to be kind. I would love to see all of the bills that we pass in the House make their way swiftly through the Senate. There are some great senators who I quite enjoy and who I think do excellent work and have extremely illustrious backgrounds. That doesn't take away from the fact that they weren't elected by the people to be there.
If we're going to entertain motions like this.... Really, this has nothing to do with the merit of the actual bill. It just has to do with the assertion that we've heard again and again that the Senate should pass legislation that the House of Commons has passed.
I'll just note that, and I would hope that we could move on to witness testimony, because I know we're all dying to talk about fresh water today.