Mr. Speaker, in responding to the hon. member for Durham, I would like to remind him of what I said earlier. If the government had wanted the senators to be involved, it would have tabled a bill that would necessarily have been considered in this House and then have gone to the Senate. That was the best way to involve both Houses.
When the government does not want a bill but simply wants to create one more task force, one too many, my position is: Let us create a committee of members of this House, a committee of elected representatives. We should not mix elected representatives with those who are not elected, people who have to go before the electorate every four or five years with those who never have to run on their record. In a democracy, Mr. Speaker, and I say this through you to the hon. member for Durham, in the kind of system we have, a non-elected House where no one is accountable to anyone except to the provisions of the Criminal Code is an anomaly. And that was my message just now.
I realize the hon. member for Durham put a question mark after his comment. He said: Perhaps I did not quite understand? Perhaps I did not get it? I hope that, with this additional information, he will understand that we should not mix elected representatives with non-elected individuals. I am not saying that the Senate should not examine these issues if it wants to. However, the Senate has its own rules, its own board of internal economy which operates differently from ours. Although it does have a budget to administer, it has different rules. We, through our own Board of Internal Economy, set much stricter rules than the Senate does through its board.
My point is, we are constantly putting our seat on the line. Every day, we are accountable to our constituents for what we do. Mixing ingredients that are not terribly compatible to start with, what with Liberal members, members of the Bloc and the Reform Party, and adding a dash of Tory senators to boot, is not really a recipe for success.