We are not supposed to utter the word "Senate" here in this House. We must say "the other place". My colleague referred to it by name but he is not supposed to. We know whom or what we are talking about. We have great respect for the people there, but we no longer see the need for the institution itself. We tend to think of it as a leftover from colonial days, as a big dormitory.
Incidentally, a great lady, Mrs. Chaput-Rolland, now retired, referred to the other place as a big dormitory in a book that she wrote. She even talked about "the hon. sleepyheads". I think that she went much too far. However, in this era of budget cuts and pension review, we should think about the need to maintain this refuge for the Prime Minister's political cronies.
Nova Scotia, Quebec and the other provinces with senates abolished them. I feel the time has come to think about this and save taxpayers $50 to $60 million. We should also think about the need to maintain a house for the Lieutenant Governor in each of the provinces. Our Lieutenant Governor does not sleep in Prince Edward Island or in Quebec City very often. Most of the
time, he sleeps in a hotel and not in the house reserved for him. We should perhaps think about all these houses we have to maintain and turn them into profitable museums.
Perhaps we should also reconsider the relevance, especially for a government proclaiming from the rooftops its Canadianity and its pride in the Canadian flag, of maintaining at the top of the parliamentary hierarchy a representative of the Queen, a lieutenant-governor. That is another position that could be abolished. We could look into that too. There is $10 million attached to this position. That is how much we could save today.
To conclude, I wonder also about another possible way we could save money. We have just adopted a bill on electoral boundaries increasing the number of members of Parliament from 295 to 301. This is a big problem. If we compare this place to the legislatures of other countries, we can see that there is something wrong with the Canadian system. Let us see how we shape up against our neighbours, the United States.
For a total population of 27 million, we have 295 MPs. With a population of 270 million, ten times ours, the Americans should have ten times more representatives than we do, or 2,950. Yet, there are only 495 representatives in the American Congress. I think we are the odd ones. Why not take the lead of France, England or the United States and bring the size of the House of Commons down, proportionally to population, to say a hundred or so members?
Considering what each member costs-we are talking about at least half a million dollars a year-in electricity, stationery, clerical support, this would mean savings of 200 times $500,000, or $100 million.
We should consider this if we really want to get back some of the credibility we lost in the eyes of the public and see our work in this place regain prestige.