Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-13, an act to establish the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and to repeal the Medical Research Council Act.
I will draw to the attention of the House some of the positive and negative things in the bill and how they relate to other things that go on in this place.
One of the positives of Bill C-13 is that those who serve on this Canadian institutes of health research board are elected by their peers. It also has accountability and peer review. Not only is someone elected by their peers, but they are reviewed by their peers. On top of that, only 4% or 5% of the entire budget is taken up in bureaucracy, which leaves 95% or 96% to be spent on the actual things the bill intends to do and the things that the Canadian institutes of health research intend to do.
I have just talked about elected by their peers, accountability, peer review and very little waste, in the amount of 4%. What institution in this place and involved with government does this directly contradict and not match up with? I think of the other place, the Senate.
I have done a fair bit of research on our Senate as of late, being that I am the critic of that place for the official opposition. It is worthwhile to point out that Canada, in relation to countries such as Burkina Faso and Sierra Leon, still continues to appoint our senators for life. It was only a few short years ago that we said that no one could sit in the Senate after the age of 75.
That all being considered, I noticed that even in the Canadian institutes of health research act, Bill C-13, the president is to serve a term of no more than five years. We have the government agreeing to the very fundamental and basic idea of a fixed appointment, a fixed election and a specified term, not a position held for life. In comparison to the Senate, people can be appointed to the Senate at the age of 30 and sit there until the ripe age of 75. That would be a period of 45 years, nine times longer than the president of the Canadian institutes of health research would be allowed to sit in their posts.
A fair question to be put to the government is that if the president of this new board, the Canadian institutes of health research, can only sit for five years before having a formal review and is no longer allowed to sit and the position changes over, how is it that a fundamental basis of our Senate, this second House that forms part of the parliament, reviews legislation, can block legislation and can create legislation for the citizens of Canada, can have somebody sit for 45 years with no form of review.
I will tell the House what I think of that concept of having no review. We have a situation today where even if the Senate runs over budget, even if it spends more than what it has already been allotted, it cannot be called before the government operations committee to account for those things. I know this because I sat on the government operations committee. I well remember when the Senate went over budget and it wanted more money.
What happened? As members who are duly elected by taxpayers to be the watchdogs of the public purse, we tried to call representatives of the Senate to come before us in committee and we could not do it. Not only could we not do it, but the Prime Minister of this place would never take action against others in that place if he were to have trouble with them unless there was severe public pressure and condemnation by their peers?
As far as the actual terms and how long one should or could be sitting in the Senate, right now somebody could be appointed at 30, be there until 75, and serve an entire 45 years without any accountability to the Prime Minister, to the House of Commons or to any elector in any province any place in the country.
Alberta is a province that likes to generate new ideas every now and again. We did that with the Senate elections act. One of the things we did was tie senators who ran under that act to a fixed term. We set it at double the length of a municipal election term. What I mean by that is that we have elections in the province of Alberta, as do many provinces in the country, that are actually fixed election dates.
This is something the Reform Party supports in terms of this place. We believe we should have fixed election dates, that it should not be up to the whim and the caprice of the government to decide when it wants to drop the writ and when it wants to call an election.
I am advocating that we actually have fixed election dates in terms of the elections act. Right now Bill C-2 is before a committee in clause by clause consideration. Then, for example, every four years we would know when the election would be. It would not be a matter of speculation for business in terms of how it conducts its activities, for the general population and constituents, or for the benefit of the government in terms of how it purchases time, buys advertising and all the rest of the things it can use taxpayer money for its benefit in putting out a good word about the government and the things it has done.
We in Alberta decided to go ahead and take that model of fixed election dates for our municipal elections that happen every three years and said that senators should be elected in every second one of them. In the last municipal election we held a Senate election in Alberta. We had more people vote in that Senate election than anybody has ever voted for any federal politician in the House, and certainly more than in the other place because nobody has ever voted for one of those senators aside from the Prime Minister and his sole vote.
We determined that we would be holding more of those Senate elections in conjunction with the fixed election dates in the municipal elections act. That is something I wanted to point out. The government recognizes those principles and puts them into things like the Canadian institutes of health research, but we do not see it being carried forward in the Senate.
When the Prime Minister campaigned in 1990 and spent his time issuing threats to the province of Quebec about 60% majorities being required for it to make a decision on its own, he said that he believed in Senate elections, that he wanted to see people elected in that other place. If he had carried forward on the intentions he laid out when he ran for the Liberal leadership, most of the people in the Senate would be elected senators by now. That is not the case because he did not follow through on his word, his promise in 1990.
I would like to touch on the whole idea of selection by one's peers. Instead of even being judged by fellow senators, appointment to the Senate is gained by the judgment of one man. Admittedly there was a rare exception in Canadian history when it was the judgment of a woman, but for the most part it has been one man, the Prime Minister of the country deciding who gets into the Senate.
Since he has not been a senator himself, we might ask what he judges or how he judges how one gets into the Senate? Like the people who might be serving on the Canadian institutes of health research, will he look at what kind of medical accreditation they have? Will he judge how they have practised medicine? Will he examine whether or not they have the support of their peers? Is any of that being done? No.
The way that someone gains a seat in the Senate is unfortunately based on how loyal they have been to a given prime minister. Are they dependable when the Prime Minister wishes to bring forward a piece of legislation that he knows will be very difficult for the people in that place to swallow, that may go against the popular consent of those he governs, that may not carry the popular will of the day? Will they be good, loyal soldiers, strap on their jackboots and carry forward with the orders?
Maybe somebody who has been a good loyal parliamentary secretary marshalling bills through committee and shoving the will of the Prime Minister down the throats of the people of the country would be the type of person who gets put into the Senate, the good loyalists.
Another way some prime ministers have judged is not just on the basis of loyalty and being good jackboot wearing parliamentary secretaries but on how much money they have raised. Many senators in that place have broken records and set the tone for being the biggest political fundraisers in Canadian history. People are judged in terms of how to get into the Senate on how many millions of dollars they raised for a leadership campaign.
Government members recognize that accountability, peer review, minimal waste and proper selection are important but not when it comes to the Senate.