I appreciate that. I don't intend to take too long, but you know what the Senate does to me.
I have to tell you that I didn't have the same problem in the first meeting that I had in this one. At the first meeting I asked, I believe, similar questions. I deliberately structured them in a way that I believed would get past the censorship of the government and pass muster with the Chair. That held the last time, so I can't see that my thinking was that far off. The chair of the advisory board, who has a lot more to be worried about than any of the members, answered quite quickly and openly. It's not necessarily what I wanted to hear, but she didn't make any attempt to not answer the question.
I don't want to cast aspersions against the previous witness; he sounds like an amazing academic and has made a wonderful contribution, but I have to tell you, it almost sounds like he was coached. Either that or he spends as much time keeping an eye on politics as he does on academia, because those were political moves. Most people don't normally have those at their fingertips.
Anyway, that's just an observation, not an accusation. I'll leave that there.
In terms of the substance of it, it is very frustrating and drives some of us insane that there are lawmakers chosen by the Prime Minister rather than the Canadian people. We forever have senators pointing to their good deeds and the good reports they have. The response is that we can have all the good deed, blue-ribbon committees that we want, but what you don't do is make them lawmakers. That's the point.
In fact, I would remind colleagues that the vote of a senator is worth more than ours, because there are fewer of them. It takes fewer votes to win the second chamber than it does our chamber. Therefore, anything that involves appointing them deserves a lot of serious scrutiny.
I didn't attempt to play any games. I don't think I left the impression that I was playing any games. With the last witness we had, it was very straightforward. I did my thing, and when the time was up, I shut up and we moved on. This time I had a witness on an issue very close to my heart, who is only one of a handful of people who replace all 35 million Canadians in deciding who our lawmakers are, and the witness wouldn't give me a straight answer.
At least answer the questions. I'm surprised that he, as a lawyer, made a bigger deal out of why he didn't want to answer it rather than providing a good lawyerly answer that didn't give me an answer. Goodness knows, we watch question period; professionals do it every day. I'm as guilty. I did it in my time when I was a minister. The better you are at not answering questions without it looking like that, the more successful you are in question period.
I'm fully prepared to accept that as a way to deal with the question, but to start playing games on a question of was it right or wrong what the Senate did to Jack Layton's bill.... Whether you like Jack Layton or the bill or not, it came from the House of Commons and the Senate rejected it without even a debate. I think it's fair for me to ask somebody who's going to be doing the hiring of senators—not the electing, the hiring—what they would think of a witness in response to that question. Do they think it's acceptable? Would they be looking for a candidate, an applicant, who says, “Oh, I think it's fine. Constitutionally, they have that right and there's no problem,” or would they be looking for somebody to say, “You know what? I think that really crosses the line between, yes it's our legal mandate, but there is a deference to the House in recognition that it has the legitimacy of a mandate from the Canadian people”?
As flawed as that is, it's the best we've got. They don't have that. They do not have the legitimacy of being elected. We could be the worst MPs in the world but we have legitimacy, and I remind you that Canadians can fire us at the end of four years. We have a small group of people who are hiring senators that we have to live with for decades, because they can't be fired.
I will end where I began. I had no interest in playing games with this. Ask Mel. You'll know when I'm playing games with something. It's as obvious as hell and I say so right up, or at least I try to. I wasn't playing games and it wasn't my intent. I am incredibly disappointed that we got answers of avoidance from somebody who's going to play such a critical role in our beloved democracy.
That's why I'm going to support this motion. I want an opportunity to see if they're all going to do that. The chair didn't. If anybody was going to play games, it would have been the chair setting the precedent, “I'm not letting any questions come near here. We're going to stay this narrow.” No, she was very open-minded. She understood where I was coming from. She didn't give me the answers I was hoping to hear, but she attempted to answer my question in what I thought was as fulsome a way as she could, recognizing where she was coming from.
I stand to be corrected but I don't believe I went after that witness in any kind of redirect in a serious way, maybe for clarification, but not the way I did today. I was very disappointed and borderline angry that someone who has the role they've been given to play in our society.... Whether they like me or my politics or not doesn't matter; as long as my question gets through the chair, it's a legitimate question on behalf of Canadians and deserves to be answered as best as possible, not to have someone use their scholarly skills to try to avoid answering the questions. That's what we do. They're doing our job when they do that. We play those kinds of games. There shouldn't be those kinds of games there.
I'll end it there. I'm not going to turn this into a filibuster, but I am going to underscore how things shifted for me today and I am now 100% behind the Conservatives in wanting to pull in as many people as possible and to look in every corner. With the way the government is playing this, I know in their heart of hearts they know this is bull. They have to do what they have to do, but I'm telling you that when we have witnesses on a subject like this who come in and start answering questions like that from someone who is trying to be fair-minded, then we're going to have trouble. My way of helping with that trouble is to support this motion.
Thank you, Chair.