Mr. Speaker, it is very important to recognize that when we are discussing an extremely dry piece of legislation many people in this House are possibly not particularly interested in delving into the intricacies or the details of it.
One of the most important or interesting areas relative to this legislation is that it originated in the Senate. Recently in his speech, ostensibly on Nunavut, the Leader of the Opposition focused his speech on the need for Senate reform. He engaged in an extended series of character assassinations of many people in the other place, many of the Senators, and engaged in what many senators and also many members of this House found to be offensive.
The important thing to recognize is that while we do have a Senate and that while we do have an upper chamber, that Senate is to be and should be utilized to provide service and expertise on this type of technical legislation to the Canadian taxpayer.
Other members have outlined the purpose of this bill and it is effectively to facilitate the settlement of securities for which the investor does not actually take physical possession. I will not go into great detail about the substance of the legislation. That has been covered quite thoroughly.
Department officials have said that the Depository Bills and Notes Act is a technical piece of legislation needed to support improvements in the efficiency of capital markets in Canada. I would agree with the Reform member speaking earlier relative to the risk given the millennium or the year 2000 factor.
Earlier today I was reading Edward Yardeni, a leading economist from New York. He suggested the year 2000 problem is far more serious than governments like to admit, partially because governments fear the eventual law suits that could emanate from the year 2000 problem. This legislation has the potential to increase the exposure of Canada's financial marketplace to the year 2000 problem and this government has yet to make a serious credible commitment to address this issue.
That the bill was introduced in the Senate should give some of our colleagues in the Reform Party some evidence of the importance, necessity and value of the contribution made by our upper chamber.
The Senate had meaningful committee meetings on this piece of legislation, as we will hear. It even introduced and passed an amendment to clarify the bill. Frankly, on this type of legislation, on financial services, economics or regulatory issues, the Senate is a bountiful supply of knowledge and expertise. The Senate is a valuable resource we should utilize in this House to benefit all Canadians.
To the chagrin of the Leader of the Opposition even his own caucus members have suggested we use the Senate more. In a recent finance committee meeting, the chair announced he was asked recently in writing by the member from Prince George—Bulkley Valley to strike a joint committee between the House of Commons and the Senate finance committee to study the bank merger issue more thoroughly.
I commend the member from Prince George—Bulkley Valley, a Reform MP, for recognizing the institutional knowledge and expertise we have in the Senate of Canada. Taxpayers are already footing the bill for a bicameral government. Why deny Canadian taxpayers the full benefit of their investment in this system? Why does the Reform Party not suggest utilizing the Senate more at this juncture instead of less? Let us make sure Canadian taxpayers are getting their money's worth.
The Senate has introduced some very meaningful legislation recently, including Senator Kenny's tobacco legislation and Bill S-3, which I have already commented on.
Some people will even argue that while the Senate may not be elected it has offered a more effective opposition to the government in the past five years than the official opposition parties in this House. The Senate has also held important and useful debates on electoral boundary redistribution, the Divorce Act, the Newfoundland school issue and assistance for post-secondary education.
Instead, some of the opposition parties have voiced strong concern over this practice of introducing legislation in the Senate. In fact when I consider the amount of time the Reform Party has taken recently to pontificate on the role of the Senate in a parliamentary democracy I tend to think that we have lost a lot of good opportunities for meaningful debates about the real issues in this House.
It is the same Senate that the Leader of the Opposition's father sat in for a number of years. It seems strange to me that someone would go to such lengths to attack a Canadian institution that one's father was actually a member of. I noticed a particularly interesting statement in the Ottawa Citizen made by the Leader of the Opposition's father in defence of the Senate in 1981. In that statement he said:
We constitute more than a chamber of sober second thought. We have been appointed to represent our respective provinces in this House. We have been selected to provide the necessary checks and balances on a parliamentary structure where representation by population results in imbalances that invite the kind of abuse of parliamentary majority power that we are witnessing today.
The Leader of the Opposition contradicts his father's remarks when he speaks as he did last week and said that members of the Senate do not represent provincial or regional interests. I feel it is very important to recognize that our Senate can, should and will, if utilized, provide the necessary leadership, judgment and expertise we need, especially with this type of legislation.
When the Leader of the Opposition was speaking about the Nunavut legislation he engaged in a number of character assassinations. It was unfortunate to hear some of the inaccuracies and the really incredible allegations that he made. After he would attack a member of the Upper Chamber at great length, he would then engage in a bit of a disclaimer and say “Far be it for me to judge that particular member”, when he knew that his words were nothing but character assassinations in vitriol.
I had an opportunity recently to visit the official website of the Reform Party where I read inflammatory and factually incorrect statements about members of the Senate. I could only surmise that the Reform Party has compromised its own position in terms of hate literature on the Internet when in fact it is using the Internet to spread factually incorrect, inflammatory and what I consider to be dangerous character assassinations via the Internet.
It is unfortunate that more members of this House do not recognize the contribution that the Senate has made and can continue to make to this type of legislation. Our party believes and has laid out certain ideas that can be implemented sooner rather than later, including the provinces putting forward lists of names for the Prime Minister to choose from when he is making the Senate appointments and limiting the term of a senator to 10 years.
Indeed, it was our party and the Conservative government under the leadership of Brian Mulroney that appointed the late Stan Waters to the Senate.
In the interim, until we have Senate reform, all members of this House should continue to work on behalf of the Canadian taxpayers to ensure that we are maximizing the level of expertise that we have in the Upper Chamber to provide the maximum level of benefit to the Canadian taxpayer by providing the types of legislation that will benefit the Canadian taxpayer as we enter the 21st century.