Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate on Bill C-41, which, as was mentioned earlier, has been sent back to us by the Upper Chamber, the Senate, where it was amended, after having been passed by the House of Commons a few months ago.
We therefore find ourselves once again in the situation that has arisen on several occasions during this Parliament of having to go back over debates we have already had because senators, more often than not for lack of enough to keep them busy, decide to review a bill and make amendments to it.
In this case, three amendments were proposed by members of the Upper Chamber and I will come back to them during my speech.
I would like to take a few minutes to deplore the state of affairs I have just described. The House of Commons is made up of representatives from throughout Canada, who have been elected by their respective constituents to represent them in this House and to introduce and pass bills meeting the needs and aspirations of the public.
The nature of our parliamentary system is such that another Chamber, the Upper Chamber, or the Senate, whose members are not elected, may, for all sorts of reasons, more often than not partisan, hold up the legislative process by intervening to amend bills, thus delaying their implementation, often with unfortunate and even disastrous consequences for many members of the public.
We must speak out against this meddling by representatives of the Senate who are, I repeat, not elected. They have been appointed by various governments. We know how senators get to the Upper Chamber. In the great majority of cases, they were selected for purely partisan reasons. There are exceptions, of course, and most senators are men and women who have served the Liberal or Conservative parties at some time in the past-