Mr. Speaker, not surprisingly, the opposition motion tabled by the Reform Party brought back to me on my way here this morning how much I was opposed to the very existence of the other House, given the present state of affairs in Canada. Furthermore, with what I have heard so far, I cannot help but have more questions.
What were the Fathers of Confederation thinking when they created the Senate? Were they not hoping for some sort of safeguard, a watchdog over democratic constitutional guarantees, all the guarantees that could be included in the Constitution, particularly the distribution of legislative powers and all that?
With the emergence of regional parties, when there is talk of an elected Senate. What worries me is that a senator elected in a given division will be a clone of a member elected to the House of Commons, an exact replica of an MP representing a riding, in my case, for example, the riding of Chambly. There is a good chance that a senator elected in the riding of Chambly would be pretty much my duplicate. For democracy, this would definitely constitute a risk.
The problem, when you come right down to it, is that, with the emergence of these regional parties, with the responsibility of elected senators to get elected, they are open to compromise, they have to bend, a bit like certain judges in the United States who are elected. We have seen the abuses that led to.
When we look at the budgets, I agree with members of the Reform Party that the amounts spent are astronomical, but before handing the Senate a death sentence, I would like someone to suggest an alternative to us, and I am not entirely convinced that an elected Senate is the best one.
What I wanted to ask the member who has just spoken is, if he is not worried about abuses, and I know about abuses, I know them as well as he does, I know that Bill C-22 on Pearson Airport is still languishing in the other place, and is not ready to be sent back to us, giving rise to costs, of course, for the Department of Transport or for the department concerned, in the form of additional compensation for those who invested in Pearson, except that two wrongs do not make a right.
I am not sure where the Reform Party is headed with its motion. Are they criticizing the very foundation of our British parliamentary system? Do they have better solutions to offer than saying that a senator must be elected to be effective? I know that in my case, with respect to the regulatory question, for example, I needed the senators at one point and they did their job of representing the regional interests they are there to represent. I would therefore ask the hon. member if he could edify me. Is he in the process of reviewing the Canadian parliamentary system?