Mr. Speaker, I unfortunately was not part of the debate on Friday. I would point out that this bill has the title of S-3. That is a problem title.
I do not want to go through it again because people have probably heard the argument before. However I want to point out that there are a couple of problems. There are some problems with the bill itself. We have some questions as to some of the privileges the bill will confer on certain people and their ability to transfer funds from pension funds.
This bill originated in the Senate. I point out again that the process is backward. I will explain it to the government again. It should bring bills into the House of Commons. This is where people have been elected to bring in a legislative package. I understand it is the government's prerogative, but the government has to bring bills in here so that opposition parties can have the first go at them. Then they go off to committee. We propose amendments. We hear from experts and other witnesses. We call people before us. We go through the whole process. That is how we devise good legislation.
Following the best legislation that can be created in committee, it comes back to the House for report stage. The report stage allows us to go through it section by section. If it needs improvements we propose amendments. We say “This is how it can be made better. This is a part that is not clear enough or is too ambiguous. Let us delete it”. Collectively we through the whole process. It goes to committee of the whole. We debate. We fine tune. We try to make something better.
Even when we agree with a piece of legislation there is often something the government could say. There are very few perfect bills or perfect people. Mistakes are made and are corrected. We get things back on track and then we go to a vote. That having been done it is sent to the other place and the process is finished off.
However, when a bill originates in the Senate the official opposition is not there because the Prime Minister appoints senators. The Senate is not elected.
Alberta right now, Mr. Speaker, you will be happy to know is going through the Senate electoral process. Coming in this fall's municipal elections Albertans will be selecting a Senate nominee to put forward to the Prime Minister. The premier of Alberta will say, once the selection process is done, that the person the people of Alberta—I will not speak for all Albertans, they are going to speak at the polls, what a privilege—have selected is whoever it might be.
We think it carries the judgment of the people. It carries the judgment of the legislature. It carries the judgment of that region. We would like the Prime Minister, as a first step, to appoint that person to the Senate as the legitimate person to be in the other place.
If the Reform Party happened to be associated with that person then we would have at least some representation there. We would have some idea of what those guys are doing in their spare time. We could at least say when they introduce a bill in the Senate that we had a crack at it.
This bill is like the others. It is a backward process. It will never be legitimized in my mind to go to the other place first. It should come here. I think Canadians understand that. When it is explained at a public meeting, they are asked where they think it should go, to the Senate, where they do not have an inkling of who gets appointed there unless they have long Liberal coattails, or to the House of Commons?
People will invariably say “Listen, I elected you guys to get that job done. It better go there first because that is what your job is”.
When it is sent to the Senate it is kicked around among the old boys' club there. They go off to see Mr. MacEachen, if he is kicking around. They get advice from him. Of course he is not supposed to be there but be that as it may, they will get some advice from him and they will talk about it. I do not know what all they do over there. Then it comes here and we are just supposed to rubber stamp it. I do not think so. It should come here first. Then it can go to the Senate and they can waste their time with it as they see fit.
This is the place for legitimate legislation. Bill S-3 is the third one. We just passed Bill S-9. It means that increasingly the government is using this tactic far more than it did in the last parliament. That is unfortunate and it is a bad trend. That is why I want to speak against that part of Bill S-3.