Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to this constitutional resolution under section 43 of the Constitution Act, 1982 to amend the Prince Edward Island terms of union in the schedule, sections 1 and 2. The purpose of the resolution is of course as stated, to allow the substitution of a bridge for a ferry.
This particular resolution comes from a government committed to not open the Constitution, to not even remotely discuss constitutional questions. At least that is the position as we have understood it. But is it really its position to act that way?
Already this is the second constitutional amendment being passed since the defeat of the Charlottetown accord. It is in addition to a number of extra constitutional measures that are either being taken or being considered, such as aboriginal self-government or federal-provincial division of powers and overlap and duplication.
Therefore the position that we are not going to talk about or amend the Constitution or deal with constitutional questions seems increasingly to be restricted to one particular issue, which is the Senate. When it comes to the Senate we will not discuss
the Constitution directly, indirectly or even hint at it, but everything else appears to be on the table.
Since we are talking about the Constitution today, I will use this opportunity to discuss some of our concerns on the Constitution. I am sure some of my colleagues will do the same. I want specifically to discuss our position on the Senate and on some of the reforms that could be made to the Senate, particularly outside of the constitutional context.
Of course, the House is well aware that our party supports a triple-E Senate. We believe the Senate should be elected, it should be fully effective, it should have full veto powers over legislation, and it should be equal. It should have equal representation from every province.
This particular amendment attempts to update the Constitution, to recognize that things are different today from what they may have been in 1873. To substitute a bridge for a ferry seems reasonable. Why not then recognize that certain political and institutional realities are very different today from what they were in 1867?
To recall our constitutional history, in 1867 the Fathers of Confederation established a parliamentary system consistent with the political theory of their time. That was the political theory dominant in the 18th and 19th centuries, a very different kind of theory from what we have today. They established a Parliament that would have three parts: the crown, and in particular two effective legislative chambers, the Senate and the House of Commons.
This model was common and still is common in most of the world, particularly the anglo-American world. The United Kingdom has the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The United States has the Senate and the House of Representatives. Even in our own provinces at that time we generally had two legislative chambers. We had the legislative councils and the legislative assemblies. In all provinces the upper house has now disappeared, although traces of it remain in Prince Edward Island.
An effective upper house in 1867 was one that was not elected. That is very different from the view we have today, a very different theory of representation, a very different theory of government. I will not get into that at great length.
Suffice it to say that an upper house had several features in Canada and elsewhere. In particular the principal historic function of an upper house had been to represent the propertied classes. Under section 23 of the Constitution Act, 1867 there were important and the very high property qualifications for the time of $4,000 for membership in the Senate.
There were also other important functions the Senate of Canada was designed to fulfil. It would be a chamber of sober second thought. In other words it would fulfil the function of checks and balances seen in many constitutional arrangements, not just in Canada but in other countries. Sober second thought was the term used. As I pointed out to some audiences the use of the term sober was probably not entirely accidental during the time of our founding prime minister.
In that regard the Senate had important characteristics that reflected that function. Generally speaking it could not originate bills, certainly not money bills; they came and still do come from this Chamber. As a chamber of sober second thought the appointments were lifetime. People were selected. A very different kind of person was expected to sit in the Senate from those sitting in the Commons. We find that under section 29 of the Constitution Act, 1867.
A third function of our Senate originated in recent history in the United States. That is the protection of the partners in the federation and their role in the federation.
Certainly the Constitution of 1867 did not establish an equal Senate. I concede that. However it also certainly did not, explicitly did not, establish a Senate based on representation by population. It established a Senate where there would be three regions or what are called divisions under section 22. At the time that was a very good reflection of the regional balance of power within the country. The provinces of Ontario and Quebec which had been recreated by Confederation were constituted as regions and the two maritime provinces together were constituted as a region.
Consistent with the theory that the Senate was not elected, unlike the United States the members were not appointed by provincial governments but were appointed by the cabinet, the executive. The cabinet or executive in that era was expected to be much more diverse in a partisan sense than we see today, much more diverse in a regional sense, and much more diverse in the sense of personality and importance of the various senior ministers.
The original Senate was selected by a government in which party lines were not as clear as they are today. The government itself was constituted of people of different political persuasions and the Senate was picked in much the same way. That practice has of course changed a great deal.
The Senate was intended to be and was a highly effective body in political terms. It had full legislative powers which remain in the Constitution Act today. It had real power in cabinet and in the legislative process. Five out of 13 or 30 per cent of the original cabinet ministers were senators. Today it is one out of 30. It would shock many Canadians to learn today that two of our prime ministers came from the Senate. They held their prime
ministership in the Senate rather than in the Commons. Of course in Britain it was quite common at that time for a lord to be prime minister as well as a member of the Commons.
Diversity and important political figures were present in the Senate at that time, right from the beginning. The principal Liberal leader of the day, George Brown, was appointed to the Senate after he failed to secure representation in the election of 1867.
Things have changed. Today we have a fuller and more democratic theory of government than we did in the past and effectiveness of the Senate, as with any other political body, requires that it be elected. This is not just a phenomenon of the Senate. I would point out that the House of Commons, as constituted in 1867, would not be remotely considered democratic today. We will talk on another occasion whether this House of Commons is effective and truly democratic. I will leave that to a later date.
In 1867 members of the House of Commons were elected but only by property holders, only by those over 21 years of age, only by those who were male. In some provinces of Canada, in some parts of Canada and at certain times in our history, elections were restricted by racial considerations.
We would never for a minute suggest that would be an appropriate way of choosing the House of Commons today or an appropriate composition for the House of Commons and so we have modernized it. We have modernized the House of Commons but not the Senate. Why have we done that? I will put it in very simple and blunt terms. We have modernized the House of Commons because it is the power centre of Ontario and Quebec. We have not modernized the Senate because it was intended to be the voice for the other regions that have not fared as well in Confederation.
At the centre of this argument I would only point out to my constituents and to those who are watching today the Ontario and Quebec alliance that will shove through this particular constitutional amendment.
It is interesting to see in this century what has happened to upper houses, not just in the anglo-American world but across the world. Those houses that were built mainly or almost exclusively on pre-democratic theory have atrophied or disappeared. I think, for example, of the House of Lords in Britain which still exists today but which has largely been stripped of its powers and exists, I suggest, as a relic of another era.
In the case of our provinces, the legislative councils, the upper houses of the provinces, which really had an exclusive pre-democratic function, have entirely disappeared, the last being in Quebec in 1968.
However, those houses built on the concept of regional representation within a federation have remained and by and large flourished as legislative chambers. The Senates in the United States and Australia have become elected bodies and have become very powerful.
In the case of the Senate in the United States we know what happened there. The United States Senate was not originally elected but rather chosen by state legislatures. That manner of selection was gradually broadened and eventually some states began to have popular elections for their senators even before the constitutional amendment proclaiming such a thing had come to pass. The Senate was largely elected by the time that happened.
In Canada the Senate has survived but its modernization has been slow. We have attempted to move along with the development of the theories but at a very slow pace. We have made no attempts in our history to increase the property requirement that defined the early Senate. It still exists on paper but $4,000 real property is now a modest requirement for many people.
In 1915 we moved to recognize the west. After the west had been in Confederation for about 45 years we decided it was time to formally recognize the presence of the west in the regional chamber. Before that there had been a few senators appointed from various provinces now and again. In 1915 a fourth Senate division was created to recognize western Canada. Since then other representatives have been added in Newfoundland and in the territories.
In 1965 we took the step of ending lifetime Senate appointments. We know there are very few lifers but this has been one particular reform.
In 1989-90 we had the election of the first senator, the late Senator Stan Waters, a member of my party, a good personal friend of mine and a ground breaker, as we all had hoped. Just as in the United States, when Senator Waters was elected there were denials from those who opposed Senate election and regional representation, denials that this could happen, that it could not happen, that it was unconstitutional, that it was illegal. There were a million impediments.
It is amazing how things can happen in this country, in any country, in any political system when people want them to happen. It is amazing how many excuses and roadblocks can be created when there is a desire to thwart the principle underlying the action.
Today the minister, to my surprise, spoke about praising the P.E.I. bridge because it had been approved in a referendum. How many times since this House has reconvened have we heard the government speak against referendums and the danger presented in referendums? When the government has an agenda it wants to see go through, a referendum is possible.
In conclusion, I will certainly not be supporting this hypocritical amendment. I suspect that many of my party members feel the same way. I will not support a selective updating of our federation. I will not support a mentality that says some needs are to be addressed while other needs are to be laughed at or ignored, depending on crass political needs.
Senate reform is important. It is a federalist solution to the kinds of regional problems that plague this country and I would suggest that in my region problems exist that are much more serious than some people here realize. Senate election, which I have spoken on specifically, is a partial solution that does not even require opening the Constitution in order to proceed. It only requires a basic sense of fairness. Without that sense of fairness do not expect the support of myself or my riding or the taxpayers I represent. Do not expect to keep coming to the trough to ask for these kinds of favours when our concerns on these matters are not taken seriously.