I heard him nodding his head from this distance. I heard the rattle.
As we are about to enter a new millennium we should have a more mature parliamentary system. The Senate has been with us for a long time. It was created many years ago as a very elitist institution to keep an eye on the commoners, the people in the House of Commons. It comes from the House of Lords in the British parliamentary system.
The latest Angus Reid poll shows that 11% of Canadians support the existing Senate. That is a very small number. One reason people are cynical about the political process is because of the parliamentarians in this House. As well, there are not many people who support the Liberals in the west. I know that the government House leader is a big fan of the Senate. He wants to be appointed to the Senate someday, the happy hunting ground for retiring politicians. This House has to take some leadership along with provincial legislatures and do something about getting rid of the other place. Of course there is a debate in the country as to whether it should be abolished altogether or whether it should be reformed, elected or whatever.
Over the last decade I have been involved in this issue for some time in terms of constitutional change. We have seen a growing movement in the country of the number of people who actually want to abolish the Senate. About 10 years ago it about 20% to 21%. In the last polls I have seen it is about 41%, and about 43% want to reform the Senate, elect it or change it in some way. There is no consensus in how it should be changed.
The Liberal member from Sarnia and I have started a national petition working together in a non-partisan way to try to mobilize the idea of straight abolition of the other place. I think the time has come for that. It is undemocratic, it is unelected, it is unaccountable, it costs almost $50 million a year and yet we sit here and tolerate the other place as an institution.
A lot of ministers, and I do not want to quote names, said publicly in the past or privately that the Senate has to go. The time has come to show some leadership as we enter the last year of this century in terms of a motion on that. I wanted to make that point. Often over the years when we debated a bill that originated in the Senate or was amended by the Senate had comments about the Senate itself, going back to the days of Stanley Knowles and even before that. These comments are very relevant today. The government leader nods and I hope we will have some leadership in terms of democracy for the new millennium across the way, a millennium project for democracy and get rid of the Senate. If the government House leader wants to put the motion right now I will certainly second it.