Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to hear the member change his tune on the Senate. I can recall in the last Parliament when the GST was being debated his party moved a motion urging the Senate to defeat the GST bill. He voted for that motion. Unless he was absent that day, I am sure he did. His whole party supported it. It supported the Senate. It abandoned its longstanding policy of abolition of the Senate. Now I hear two of the members from that party squawking and complaining that really is not their policy. I wish the New Democratic Party would make up its mind.
I would like to deal on a more serious note with the issues raised by the hon. member. What he is asking the Prime Minister to do is frankly silly. He is asking the Prime Minister to ignore one of the constituent parts of Parliament. He knows that Parliament is composed of three elements: the Crown, the House and the Senate. He wants the Prime Minister to ignore the Senate and not fill it so the Senate is left as a sort of floating group of people that are there that were there before. Gradually it will diminish and become less effective simply because its members are not appointed any more and there are a whole bunch of vacancies.
Those left are still able to carry out all the functions of the Senate. One of the functions the Senate has is the right to review bills that are passed by this House. Indeed its concurrence is required on all bills passed by the House. The hon. member seems to have conveniently forgotten that. He is asking the Prime Minister to let a Tory rump in the Senate tell the House what it can do with its bills. I do not think any responsible Prime Minister could agree with such a thing.
The Conservative Party in the House of Commons, as he knows, was almost wiped out in the last election. It has but two members who are rarely here because they have other responsibilities apparently to try to rebuild the party. We are left trying
to run the Government of Canada dealing with a Conservative majority in the Senate.