Mr. Speaker, I would like to repeat to the hon. member that the provinces which did away with their upper houses never regretted it. The province of Quebec, where the Legislative Council was abolished in 1968, never regretted that decision, and the laws are not worse than they were.
The people of Quebec barely noticed the disappearance of the Legislative Council. If it had not been for the headlines in the dailies, a good part of the population might never have known that the Legislative Council had ceased to exist.
I repeat, the modern means of communication are the watchdog of the people. When the Prime Minister of the former government announced his intention to pass legislation to limit old age pensions, a little lady, very shy, very modest, rose up in front of television cameras and said to the Prime Minister: "Charlie Brown, you broke your promises".
It did not take long, it did not take a Senate to make the Prime Minister realize that he was about to do something that the people did not approve. It took only a single and modest taxpayer to tell the Prime Minister, in front of the cameras, that the bill he was about to pass was unjust for a good many people.
It did not take a Senate, the Prime Minister backed down and the bill was never voted on.
I challenge the present government to try to pass, tomorrow, a bill which would be against the best interest of the people, and then try to enforce it despite the opposition of the population. The Senate would be of no help in such a case.
Senators themselves had to be called to order a few months ago when they asked for a pay raise. It is not the House of Commons that made the senators reconsider their position, it was public opinion. Senators were told that they had not shown enough wisdom to realize that in a recession everybody had to
tighten their belts. It is not the Senate, in its wisdom, which understood it had gone too far, it is public opinion alerted by the media. The House of Commons told the Senate to show more wisdom. All this goes to prove that our democracy is well protected, even without a Senate which costs $54 million a year.