Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate on the outrageous symbol the Senate has become, given our current political and economic situation.
There is obviously something repugnant in the fact that senators refuse to appear to justify their budgetary votes. These people are not elected, they are not accountable to anybody except their friends who have appointed them, and they refuse to appear before the elected representatives to justify their operating expenditures and the total budget allocated to them.
When we talk about the Senate as a whole, the expenditures we are talking about today are only the vote of $43 million allocated to the Senate, but there is more. We know other costs are paid in part by the House or result from the presence of senators here. So, the actual costs are much higher. We are talking here of an average of at least $500,000 for each senator.
Do you think that, in the current context, we can really afford to waste tens of millions of dollars year in and year out? Just imagine what that adds up to over a period of 20 years. It is more than a billion for these people.
We can conclude that, after 25 years of constant deficits, the amount that has been spent on senators and their operating expenditures tops a billion dollars. We figure that a few billion dollars of the debt are due to this political institution, which has totally outlived its purpose and which has no tie to any serious political process that could yield some concrete results.
What do they do? That is the question the people in my region keep asking me. What do they do? Not much. They come here for a few days of rest, they get their pay cheque and then go back where they came from. I recently read in a newspaper: "We contacted the senator at his home"-in Fort Lauderdale, I think it was. Fort Lauderdale. Indeed, they had contacted him at his home. It is really something else to live outside the country when you sit in the Senate of Canada.
I would like these people to account for their actions and to explain why we should set aside some budgetary votes to pay for their operating expenditures. I hope their travel expenses do not include their trips between Canada and the United States.
Do they have any legitimacy? I said earlier that these people are appointed by the Prime Minister or his office and that sometimes, depending on the circumstances, the appointment can be seen as some kind of reward. Anyone can be appointed, a minister we want to get rid of, someone we want to keep out of the way, or a friend who did us a few favours. These people are being rewarded for services rendered.
When you do a Prime Minister or someone who could some day become Prime Minister a favour, it is like buying a 6-49 ticket: if you are lucky, some day, you could win a seat in the Senate. If you are young, you can hit the jackpot, because you get appointed until you reach 75 years of age. And at 75, you are not left in the lurch, there is a pension plan for senators. Do not worry, you are entitled to a gold-plated pension, a nice little cushion.
We can laugh about it, but at some point it no longer makes any sense and somebody has to put a stop to it. I know that a votable motion concerning the abolition of the Senate will be put before the House in the near future. I cannot wait to see it. I look at my colleagues in this House, especially the hon. member for Brome-Missisquoi, who will vote on this issue and will surely support our position. He will not have any choice. I know his constituents. Some of my relatives live in his riding. These people want to sign the petition which is being circulated in my riding to have the Senate abolished. I am asking him to circulate the same petition in
his riding. While he is getting people to sign it, he will get to know his constituents better and try to convince them. I wish him good luck.
In short, my colleague talked about a poll where 68 per cent of the respondents said, in 1993, that they were in favour of the abolition of the Senate. Just think about what that percentage is today when cuts are made in social programs, in unemployment insurance, when the economic situation is very bad. Listen, the number of people in favour of the Senate's abolition cannot double because it would exceed 100 per cent, but I am convinced it is higher now.
In my riding, I started a petition with my colleague of Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup no more than a week ago. We sent it to a number of organizations, and answers have started to come in. I am even thinking of hiring another staff member in my office to handle the petitions because there are so many of them. We got close to one thousand signatures in a few days. Think about it. To get so many signatures in just a few days is significant. Most members who tried it in their riding found out readily that the people are spontaneously in favour of the Senate's abolition.
And there is something else I would like to add. Not only the senators do not do much here, but they do not do much either in their region. Normally, most senators are appointed for an area or represent a region.
In the three years I have been a member of Parliament and have followed various matters very closely, I do not recall having worked with a senator who represents us. In fact, there is one who comes from our region, but he does not represent a specific area, just the province of Quebec. When there was heated debate in the Senate on such things as the GST and free trade, Prime Minister Mulroney, a Conservative, who did not have the support of the majority in the Senate, used his power to appoint additional senators. The senator from our region is one of those new senators. There is probably another senator on the list who is supposed to represent us; our region must be grouped together with other regions, but nobody knows who the senators are. We do not see them. They are not working on any issues. They are not there, they are not active, they are nothing but ghosts. They are not even there.
I am sure there are people from Abitibi-Témiscamingue watching us. If somebody somewhere remembers a matter about which a senator actually did something, call and tell us. We would really like to know. However, I am sure the phone is not about to start ringing because we have not seen any senators regularly.
By the way, if you want to sign the petition and you do not know where to find it, you can call our office at 1-800-567-6433 and we will be happy to send it to you. You can then circulate it in your area.
Some of my colleagues talked about the process. Not only is it outrageous to waste money, but look at how inflexible our political system is. Despite the obvious will of the people, particularly in Quebec, to see the Senate abolished, and even if the House of Commons were to vote in favour of abolishing the Senate, which I hope it will soon, the senators themselves would also have to say yes for the Senate to be abolished.
We are therefore giving them a veto, as it were, over their future, and do you think that in the end they will agree to disappear of their own accord? The only way that will happen is if there is so much pressure that they are forced to resign, because it is embarrassing to be a senator and they can no longer show their face. They will have the option of joining our other colleague in Fort Lauderdale. That is one possibility, but, that aside, for those of them who want to live in Quebec and in Canada, it will be difficult explaining to people that they are taking money from the federal government to sit in the Senate.
This shows clearly how far they have gone to protect themselves. It proves one thing, which is that these people were probably worried about being criticized one day and having their future hang in the balance.
This being the case, what we can hope for is more support. I urge people, particularly those in my riding, in my region, to add their voices and their signatures to the petition that is circulating and that will be tabled here in the House, particularly around the third hour of debate that remains on a motion by the Bloc Quebecois to have the Senate abolished. That is one thing we can do, something concrete. The more signatures we get, the more it will show that we have the support of the public.
Now, there are people who would like to reform the Senate, make a few adjustments, fix it up. That, too, has serious limitations, because I am not sure that the public wants to see another political level added. Take the case of Quebec, where people are already voting in municipal, provincial and federal elections. And school boards are elected as well, I almost forgot about that. More and more, people are talking about decentralization, but we do not know exactly what is going to happen. Probably, when decentralization comes, there will be some accountability. We can therefore assume people will exercise their franchise at a more local level, but in any case above the municipal level.
Are we going to add, on top of all that, a level of elected representatives in Ottawa who will monitor other elected representatives? Our best monitors are the public. When these people get sick and tired of having us around, after four years they can wield their pencils and turf us out.
In fact, if we look at the last election, they exercised that right brilliantly and quickly changed the colour and perspective of Parliament. So I think they are capable of looking after their own
interests. Citizens are informed and follow the debates and the major issues. The media are there to pass the information on.
The concept of having a committee of elders, even if they were to be elected, is something I am not sure the public would accept. In fact, we are working very hard to get rid of a whole political level. And we certainly would not want to add another one with the Senate.
That being said, I am personally not very keen on this debate. It is also a fact that some provinces would like to take advantage of this debate to make all provinces equal in Canada. However, Quebec will never tolerate having only one-tenth of the representation in a Canadian parliamentary forum, when it has one quarter of the population. In Quebec, that would not get much support.
When there were discussions on proposals by western Canada for Senate reform, Quebec Liberals did not support those proposals.
As I said earlier, it would be interesting to see in the weeks to come-because this fall, this will be a much discussed issue-what the attitude will be of members opposite. Liberal members who tell us about the need for efficient and effective management, for cutting waste and unnecessary spending, and I see some members here in the House who have said so many times, who do so in committee and who attack all fiscal expenditures and the rest, they will have to prove they mean what they say.
Now, those people may mean what they say about making an effort and tightening their belts, but they are not even called to account. Sure, they will make cuts in places where they have friends, friends they appointed, and it may hurt them a little. We call that cutting the fat. That will not hurt anyone.
Besides, these people are not penniless. They are paid for services rendered. I do not think this will dramatically affect the financial situation of the people who are there. It will not cause a major social tragedy. There will be no need to set up committees of therapists or psychologists to help people cope with the shock of losing a job with the Senate. So there will no serious damage.
Consider that between now and the year 2000, between 250 and 300 million dollars will be wasted. Will this be stopped? We say yes. We say it must stop. I hope members opposite will have the courage to act accordingly, including the hon. member for Brome-Missisquoi.