Debates of Oct. 20th, 1995

Senate

[Peter Milliken, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member. I know I would enjoy hearing his remarks, but I think in terms of the normal rotation of speakers among the parties that a government member should participate in this debate at some point.

The hon. member for Mission-Coquitlam has proposed a motion to the House and I am pleased to speak on it. I was surprised that she did not quote from her leader in the course of her remarks. I thought a decree had been issued from the leader's office that all members of the Reform Party were to quote the leader in every speech at least once. Perhaps she forgot the decree this afternoon.

I would like to help her out because I have a quote from the little green book. It is the little book of Reform, the gospel according to the hon. member for Calgary Southwest and the Reform Party.

The hon. member for Calgary Southwest in one of his more lucid moments said: "The three priorities of the present Senate are in order: protocol, alcohol and Geritol". These remarks might be considered by some to be insulting of the Senate. I guess for that reason the hon. member for Mission-Coquitlam did not feel it was appropriate to quote those remarks. However, I have quoted them.

The hon. member for Calgary Southwest evidently thinks these remarks are appropriate. I know that his views are shared by the hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster because the last time I quoted this he was citing along with me. He remembered all the words. He had memorized the words of his leader and quoted them along with me.

I point them out because there is a lot of agreement on that point among members of her party apparently. Yet, at the same time, they have not proposed the abolition of the Senate, as members of the other group which was largely western based, the New Democratic Party, used to do and still does. They now are back to abolition but for a while they supported the Senate.

Mr. Speaker, you will remember in the last Parliament when we were debating the GST that the NDP changed its principles. The principle was that there could not be an unelected body in Parliament; however, it changed its principles in the course of the GST debate.

I see that I have hit a nerve.

[Lee Morrison, Reform, Swift Current—Maple Creek—Assiniboia, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I am wondering what the relevance of all of this is to the matter which is under debate.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The hon. parliamentary secretary will make his point relevant very soon.

[Peter Milliken, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I remind the hon. member for Swift Current-Maple Creek-Assiniboia that this motion deals with the Senate; it is not on gun control. He may have heard the hon. member for Mission-Coquitlam spend half of her time speaking on gun control. The only reason she did so was that her arguments on this motion were so thin she ran out of them in about ten minutes and had to fill in the rest of her time on gun control.

This motion is about Senate reform. If the hon. member had read the motion instead of making these interruptions, he would realize what I am talking about. We are talking about the Senate and I was talking about the approach of the New Democratic Party to the Senate. It wanted to abolish it. The motion before us is not for abolition; it is for a triple E Senate and it is that to which I wish to speak.

The hon. member's motion proposes changes to the powers, the method of selecting senators and the number of members by which a province is entitled to be represented in the Senate. Thus, the motion would require a constitutional amendment under the seven provinces with 50 per cent of the population general amending procedure. That is what would have to be done in order to achieve the amendment as proposed by the hon. member.

This seven and fifty amendment as we call it, seven provinces and 50 per cent of the population represented by those seven provinces, must have the consent of the House of Commons and the legislative assemblies of two-thirds of the provinces representing at least 50 per cent of the population according to the most current general census. The Senate could in respect of such a constitutional amendment exercise a six-month suspensive veto.

Once again, I would say to the hon. member that the Charlottetown accord contained a Senate amendment proposal along the lines proposed in the hon. member's motion, but it was defeated by a majority of Canadians in a majority of the provinces. There is little evidence to indicate that Canadians wish to reopen this constitutional debate. Other issues, such as the economy and job creation, are the priorities of Canadians. That is why the government is dealing with those issues and not the one the hon. member has raised today or any others like it.

I think the hon. member would agree that despite her best intentions, this is not a good time to be opening a constitutional debate in this country, as her motion would suggest. In Quebec the current government of that province is unlikely to approve any constitutional changes, save for an amendment making the province an independent country.

It is important to note that because Quebec's approval will be necessary to achieve the kind of Senate reform she wants, we should not bother pursuing it. We have to have that agreement. It is not just because it has to be part of the seven and fifty portion of the agreement; Quebec has a special arrangement.

Quebec of all the provinces is divided into 24 electoral divisions for the purposes of representation in the Senate pursuant to section 22 of the 1867 Constitution Act, the British North America Act. Because Quebec senators must meet their property or residence qualifications in the division they represent, it could be argued that a scheme for Senate reform which sought to provide equal representation for the provinces, as this motion does, might require not

only seven of the provinces representing half the population but also a bilateral amendment with Quebec if the current provisions respecting these 24 seats were to be altered.

Bilateral and multilateral amendments are covered by section 43 of the Constitution Act. It provides that an amendment to the Constitution in relation to a provision applying to one or more but not all provinces requires the consent of the Senate, the House of Commons and the legislative assemblies of each province to which the amendment applies. Imagine getting that kind of agreement in the Senate, let alone in the provincial legislatures involved.

Bilateral or multilateral amendments are not subject to minimum and maximum time limits and do not require votes by a majority of the members of the legislative bodies involved. Otherwise they are subject to the same rules as the seven and fifty amendments and the Senate is limited to a suspensive veto.

Thus even if Parliament were to pursue the motion and seek to amend the Constitution in accordance with it, it is doubtful we could secure the requisite consent of the National Assembly in Quebec. Furthermore there is also no guarantee other provinces would approve of these changes.

The Ontario government of Premier Mike Harris could hardly be expected to weaken the province's influence in the upper chamber without getting something in return, being mindful of the defeat of former Premier David Peterson in 1990 after he agreed to give up some of Ontario's seats in order to keep the Meech Lake accord alive. We all remember that. I thought it was a generous gesture on the part of the premier but it was not popular in Ontario. Mr. Speaker, you would remember that; you have a seat in Ontario.

Smaller provinces like Nova Scotia and New Brunswick which together represent 6 per cent of the population and hold 19 per cent of the Senate seats are hardly likely to be enthusiastic supporters of the motion put forward by the hon. member for Mission-Coquitlam. Therefore I think there is very little reason to believe that these provinces would consent to any changes unless they got something in exchange, like a stronger constitutional obligation for the federal government to make equalization payments. I only throw that out as one suggestion out of many possibilities.

Furthermore we could not contemplate radical Senate reform without public participation. Various groups would argue that other constitutional issues are far more pressing than changes in the Senate and should take precedence over the Senate, things like entrenching specific rights of aboriginal peoples in the Constitution.

Again, I draw attention to the failure of the 1992 Charlottetown accord. This accord contained provisions for an elected, equal and more effective Senate, all of the things that are in this motion. It was rejected in a federal referendum in nine provinces and two territories and in a provincial referendum in Quebec. A majority of Canadians in a majority of provinces voted no.

Outside Quebec, Canadians rejected the accord by 54 per cent to 45 per cent with 1 per cent casting spoiled ballots. Quebecers voted 55 per cent no, 42 per cent yes. In the member for Mission-Coquitlam's own province of British Columbia the Charlottetown accord suffered its most resounding defeat where 67.2 per cent voted no. Yet she trots into the House today and puts forward exactly the same provision that was in the Charlottetown accord.

I thought her party trumpets how democratic it is all the time. The will of the people in her own province was 67 per cent against this proposal and what does she do? She trots in here and proposes the same thing. I have hit another nerve and this one is from Saskatchewan.

[Lee Morrison, Reform, Swift Current—Maple Creek—Assiniboia, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I do not believe it is proper for a member to use deliberately inaccurate data when he makes-

[The Speaker]

Order. I think we are getting into debate. I am sure the hon. member will have his turn in a little while to refute whatever one hon. member or another says. We always have the interpretation of figures which can go either way.

However, I caution all hon. members in using the term. I believe I stand to be corrected, but "deliberately mislead" is an unparliamentary term and I would hope all hon. members would shy away from it.

[Peter Milliken, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do hope these needless interruptions will not be taken off my time. I am pressed to finish what I think is an accurate speech and I am looking forward to the hon. member making his own instead of interrupting by arguing.

Again, I express my shock that the hon. member for Mission-Coquitlam would come forward with proposals very similar to what was in the Charlottetown accord after that accord was rejected out of hand by the electors of her riding, and even more shockingly was rejected by her party and opposed vigorously by her party while some of us had the good sense to support it.

Despite the fact that the accord contained provisions for major Senate reform, including measures to provide for representation of aboriginal peoples and new powers to veto any House of Commons legislation that changed taxation policy in key areas of natural resources, this accord failed. I stress that.

The Charlottetown negotiations demonstrated that agreement among first ministers, territorial and aboriginal leaders was possible, but it was not arrived at easily. Although the Reform Party leader referred to the accord negotiated by 17 parties as the

Mulroney deal, it was in fact the result of a very complex process that required extensive accommodation and compromises.

Writing in the Edmonton Journal , former Alberta Premier Don Getty said: ``The package was so difficult to get, I would say it was almost a miracle that we were able to put it together''. Yet here the Reform Party, having worked against it and having striven for its defeat, now is pulling chunks out of it and saying it supports this and that, let us do this and let us do that. It shows what a lack of sound policy thinking it has. It keeps going back to things that are really dead. The Reform Party should rethink this resolution.

I urge the hon. member for Mission-Coquitlam to consult with her leader again, refer him to the quote I have read from the little green book, and ask him what he really thinks of this motion to see if he does not think that perhaps it is pie in the sky, unnecessary, and not a reasonable thing to put forward in Canada as we know it today, having gone through these two recent constitutional discussions at great length and at great pain to our country.

[Jim Gouk, Reform, Kootenay West—Revelstoke, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a few notes to keep me on track, but after some of the unbelievable rhetoric I heard coming from the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands I feel like throwing it out and straightening the record on all the things I would probably make unparliamentary reference to if I were not under complete control.

The one comment I will make is about how the hon. member said that former Premier Peterson of Ontario was thrown out of office because he agreed to reduce some of the seats for Ontario in the Charlottetown accord. I suggest he was thrown out of office because he was a Liberal. We will soon see that happening on the other side here as well.

I will deal with other parts that he erroneously brought forward in the content of my comments today.

The Senate is something about which I hear a lot of complaints. It is an ongoing complaint within my riding. I have a tremendous number of people who communicate with me in one form or another asking why the Senate is even there and calling for its abolition.

One of the things I have suggested to them is that the Senate in its current form does not provide much of a benefit to Canadians. It is in essence a rubber stamp most assuredly for the balance of this term of government, now that the Liberals have functional control of it, and carrying on for as long as it takes the balance to shift again once we have managed to send the Liberals to the other side of the House, chasing after Mr. Peterson. There is no need for it to be a rubber stamp, but that is the way the system works currently. We are saying rather than abolish it, change it into something that is far more democratic.

The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands, the Prime Minister, and many others who occasionally sound out on the other side of the House keep talking about the Charlottetown accord and how we rejected not the Charlottetown accord, but the triple E Senate. The Charlottetown accord was not about a triple E Senate. That was a little carrot put in there, which was kind of like putting a bad tasting pill in something sweet to try to attract us.

The Reform Party gave full credit to any part of the Charlottetown accord that was worthwhile. We said there were some good parts. At any place I went to address the Charlottetown accord, the first thing I commented on were the goods parts, not all the garbage that was in there. Believe me, there was plenty. Some of the parts were actually good.

It is absolutely ludicrous that the Liberals, every time we try to bring up something that has some linkage to the old Charlottetown accord, say it was offered to us on a platter and we turned it down.

The are three parts to a triple E Senate. First is the elected Senate. We could have that part now without any constitutional amendment. It takes absolutely no change. It takes the co-operation of the Prime Minister and his Liberal cronies to agree to do what the majority of Canadians would like to see.

We have already seen it. We have seen the democratic election of Senator Stan Waters in Alberta. As other vacancies have occurred, we have called on the Prime Minister to allow that province to designate who it would like him to appoint by allowing it to hold a democratic election, as Alberta did, instead of appointing some Liberal hack he had some obligation to look after for one reason or another. The majority of Albertans said we want Stan Waters.

Why not start this now? The reason is that the Liberals would not have any place to pay off all the people they have obligations to and to put future obligations on people who they place in the Senate.

Many senators not only could get elected but would be willing to stand for election. It would give them the credibility they may be due but have lost because most people look on the Senate simply as being loaded up with friends and people who have special ties to the party in power, whatever that party might be.

What does electing senators provide? It provides regional representation from people who do not owe their allegiance to their patron but instead can represent the people of the region they come from.

The second part of a triple E Senate is equality, the equalness of the Senate. It calls for an equal number of senators from each province. We live in a country that goes by the concept in

government of representation by population, the ultimate definition of democracy which should not be changed.

There are problems with almost every system and rep by pop has its problems, particularly in a country where 90 per cent of the population lives within 50 miles of the American border in a huge geographic area. Further, a large portion of them live in the central part of the country because that is where the original development started before moving westward. There is an imbalance in the distribution and the needs of the people in the different regions.

What we need in the Senate is some kind of regional balance to provide control over the problems created by rep by pop. This might be a difficult concept for centralists but there is a growing number of regional concerns that the government and others do not address.

The Quebec referendum is a direct result of what happens when these regional concerns are not addressed by Parliament. The number of senators does have to be large. Two people represent states in the United States that have population bases as large or larger than this entire country. They do it quite happily with two people. I do not hear complaints from California, from Texas or from New York that they have the same number of senators as Rhode Island. I refute what the previous member from the Bloc Quebecois had to say.

Finally, we get to the third part, the effective part of triple E. The Senate must have sufficient powers to be able to provide a regional perspective and address regional problems created by legislation without being beholden to their patron.

A majority of the House, as was referred to by the member for Kingston and the Islands, is not necessarily a majority. A majority from the Liberal Party is the word of the Prime Minister. We have seen that with several bills already where some members in the Liberal Party had the audacity to vote according to the direction of their constituents and were thrown out of their committees for it. That is not a majority. It is not democracy. That is autocratic rule. That is what a Senate has to be able to overcome. A triple E Senate gives them the tools and the power to do that.

This does create a dilemma for members of the Liberal Party. I can understand that because they would lose this tremendous source of patronage appointments, a place to shove their friends and other people to whom they have obligations.

There was a vacancy for the chair on the board of referees in my riding. I heard through very good sources that the former assistant campaign manager of the Liberal candidate was being appointed to that position. In fact, he came to us and told us not to bother putting any names forward because he was getting it.

I raised the matter in the House and eventually it became a big issue. I certainly was talking about patronage. The individual was interviewed by the Vancouver Sun and was asked whether it was a patronage appointment. When asked how he would respond to that, he said: ``What is wrong with patronage? How else are we going to get anyone to join our party?'' How else indeed.

I am not suggesting that all senators or not good. There are some good people in the Senate, but that is more from good luck than good management. I am simply pointing out that the Senate does not do the job most Canadians need and want it to do. There is an opportunity for us to start now with that triple E part by having elected people going to the Senate.

Let us start with an idea that does not need any constitutional change and then branch out from there. Before we know it, the place may even become fully democratic.

[Judy Bethel, Liberal, Edmonton East, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the private member's motion before us proposes changes to the powers of the Senate, the method of selecting senators and the number of senators by which the provinces are entitled to be represented in the Senate.

Clearly what needs to be understood here is that the third party is asking that there be constitutional change. If there is one thing which is absolutely clear, it is that Canadians have said they do not want constitutional change now. They want to focus on priorities. They do not want us to focus on constitutional change. They clearly expect, and rightfully so, for us to focus on their priorities which are jobs and economic growth.

The hon. member talks about regional problems, regional priorities and regional concerns. One thing we can be positive about is that all Canadians no matter where they live in Canada are concerned with jobs and economic growth. It is time to focus on exactly those.

The thing I find so difficult about this type of motion is that members of the third party had an opportunity to support exactly what this motion is asking for in the Charlottetown accord but they chose not to. They had their opportunity but instead chose political opportunism ahead of principle.

The Reform Party stated in Montreal on October 15 that it wanted to change federalism only through administrative agreements, not constitutional talks. Each of the 20 changes proposed by the Reform Party could be accomplished without comprehensive federal-provincial negotiations of the sort that led to the failed Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords.

What we are seeing here is an absolute flip-flop. The introduction of this motion shows once again the inconsistency of the Reform Party. It adopts policies based on which direction the wind is blowing at the time. Certainly the member must realize that her motion would require constitutional amendments. I ask: What will it be, constitutional amendments or Reform Party administrative agreements? The Reform Party must make up its mind. This is an incredibly inconsistent statement.

In conclusion, unlike the Reform Party, our government believes in working with Canadians to improve the effectiveness and responsiveness of our federal institutions. We have done many of those things already. We have taken a number of steps, for example introduced parliamentary reforms to allow MPs to better represent their constituents, overhauled the committee process to allow for greater input, and so on.

I close by saying that Burt Brown of Alberta is the strongest proponent of a triple E Senate. Everyone in Alberta recognizes that clearly. He is being really responsible. Today he is not talking about a triple E Senate. If members know Burt Brown they will know that he ploughed a giant message in his fields with the words: "It is better together".

[Lee Morrison, Reform, Swift Current—Maple Creek—Assiniboia, SK]

Mr. Speaker, there is conventional wisdom among the people who sit at my right and certainly those who sit at my extreme left, no pun intended, that the best thing to do with the Senate would be to do away with it and save the people $40 million annually.

That could be done but it would be a very shortsighted move. We need a real Senate, not the old people's home that we have over there now, to protect the common people from the House of Commons or, to put it perhaps more succinctly, to protect the public from the PMO.

Every meaningful federal union on earth, save ours, has an elected upper house to protect the rights of the regions. If we look at what has happened in Canada in the last five years, we see there have been two instances where the existence of a real Senate would have permanently blocked some very unsavoury parliamentary legislation. The first instance was the infamous GST which passed because there was a Senate that could be easily manipulated by the Prime Minister.

The second one has already been alluded to by my colleague and that is Bill C-68, the people control bill. They call it the crime control bill but it is a masquerade. If we had a real Senate representing the regions that bill would be consigned to the darkest corner of hell where it belongs.

In the last 50 years there has been no greater public outcry than there has been over that specific piece of legislation. We have the spectacle of the governments of four provinces and two territories lining up together with the protesting citizenry, demanding that the particular bill be stopped. Yet, because the Prime Minister has the ability to manipulate the Senate, to stack it, nothing can be done. There will never be a real democratic system in the country that reflects the views of the regions or of individual citizens unless we have the opportunity to elect two Houses, and both Houses should have power.

This legislation will almost certainly be proclaimed into law. The only hope we have now would be to get a Reform government to repeal it.

I must confess that before I came to this place I was a bit of a Senate basher. I felt that the other place had no place. However I have attended some of the committee hearings that it holds and I must say that they compare very favourably with the ones we hold. The problem is that those committees represent an illegitimate body and therefore cannot make recommendations that have weight.

Even if we cannot get triple E, surely we should be electing our senators. I do not know how many people are aware that in the United States of America, which has triple E, there was a period of more than a century when all its senators were appointed. They were appointed by the state governors. The elected Senate in the United States devolved from an act by the Oregon legislature when it demanded that its senators in that one state be elected. It grew from there and eventually they changed the constitution of the country to accommodate the new realities.

Changes can be made. In the long term I agree with my colleague that we must have triple E. In the short term I would plead with the government to get off its high horse and start allowing the provinces to elect senators to be appointed subject to their election.

[The Speaker]

The hour provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired. Pursuant to Standing Order 96(1), this item is dropped from the Order Paper.

It being 2.30 p.m. the House stands adjourned until Monday next at ll a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 2.30 p.m.)