Debates of June 8th, 1999

Main Estimates, 1999-2000

[John Williams, Reform, St. Albert, AB]

Madam Speaker, I will get this speech under way.

I would like to acknowledge the eloquent defence of the Senate by the government House leader, but unfortunately it was not just a defence of the Senate, it was a defence of the status quo, do nothing Liberal government. We already heard in speeches by the Prime Minister how he was going to do something about the Senate. Now that the Liberals are in power, they do nothing about the Senate.

We have to go all the way back to 1867, to the time the constitution of Canada was written and which we are unable to change because of circumstances that seem to be beyond our control. There are two things about the Senate. It is not elected and every Canadian knows that. The other thing the constitution has required of senators since 1867 is that they be able to demonstrate a net worth in excess of $4,000. That is nothing today, but in 1867 $4,000 was a heck of a lot of money. If candidates could not come up with $4,000, they could not sit in the Senate. That was the magic dividing line between the commons, which is everybody, and the elite, the powerful, the moneyed who could sit in the other place.

When the constitution was written in 1867 it was modelled on the example of Westminster in London, England. It had the House of Lords, the aristocracy, the rich, the powerful, the people who inherited the money from generation to generation and the House of Commons, the plebes who had to struggle to survive under the leadership of the aristocracy.

The aristocracy said they did not mind giving most of the power to the House of Commons, but they wanted the sober second thought. They were basically saying “If they stomp on us too hard, we are going to slow them right down, if not put a stop to it. We do not mind the House of Commons thinking it has all the power, but sober second thought means if it is going to trample on us too much, we will shut it down”.

The Senate is this age old tradition of the aristocracy, the rich and the powerful keeping a short leash on the rest of the country. That is the reason we in the Reform Party say things have got to change.

I was glad to hear the government House leader say that he is all for an elected Senate. This has got to be called progress. We now have an admission by someone on the government side right here in the House on the record saying that he favours an elected Senate. I can see by the smiles on the other side that perhaps they do not all agree. We know where the NDP comes from. Progress may be glacial in its speed, but progress is being made.

The Senate needs reform. The government could provide the impetus for reform if it wanted to. Obviously, while the rhetoric of the Prime Minister says he would like reform, he has no intention of instituting reform, hence the impasse. The Reform Party has said let us move on Senate reform. The government talks about Senate reform. The NDP says to abolish the Senate. Maybe one day we will make progress.

The Senate is one area where a lot of money is wasted, but there are other areas where money is wasted. I can think of no finer example of waste than the National Film Board. The National Film Board makes all kinds of films, some about the Senate, some about other things.

I published a waste report today. It is available on the Internet. I do not have my website address here, but the report is available on the Internet and if anybody wants to get a copy of it they can find it.

I brought out some interesting little things on how the National Film Board spends taxpayers' money. We are talking about taxpayers' money today as this is the business of supply. In the House of Commons later on this evening we are going to vote on about $160 billion worth of spending. We started the debate at 6:30 p.m. and we will be wrapping it up at 10:00 p.m. In three and a half hours we are going to get the job done, all $160 billion. There will be close, analytical inspection. Every dime is going to be checked over in three and a half hours, if you can believe that, Mr. Speaker. I do not.

Let us look at a couple of things at the National Film Board. Democracy à la Maude , a profile of Maude Barlow and her crusade for social justice and economic sovereignty as the head of the 100,000 member Council of Canadians. We spent $288,336.52, do not forget the cents, on a profile of Maude Barlow.

The 100,000 Canadians who belong to the Council of Canadians are going to say this is great stuff. But for every member of that organization, I am quite sure I could find 10 others who would say it is a waste of money, which is why I put it in my waste report because I let Canadians judge. It is their money that is being spent. When I ask them if this is good value for money, or is it a waste of money, they say it is a waste of money.

What else do we have in here? And So To Bed . We spend a lot of time in our beds, not all of it sleeping, but I am not going to get into that debate. We spent $249,007.75, do not forget the $7.75, on a delightful look at the evolution and the history of the bed. I have to admit that I have not seen the movie, but if we are going to take a delightful look at the evolution and the history of the bed without talking about what people do in the bed, I do not know what is in this movie, but my imagination starts to go on a little bit, especially when we have been talking about same sex benefits and everything else recently in the last few weeks. There has been Bill C-78, same sex benefits and conjugal relationships, and now we have beds. When we bring it all together our imaginations can run riot.

[An hon. member]

Tell us more.

[John Williams, Reform, St. Albert, AB]

He wants to hear more. Perhaps I should not. You will shut me down for being unparliamentary.

How about Frank the Wrabbit . This is interesting. We must not let our imagination run off here. This is a film about how humans and rabbits formulate and justify beliefs. How much? $194,855.30.

How about rats. We will go from rabbits on to rats. Rats , a film about people who in some capacity are linked together by rats. The film explores the netherworld of the sewers in Toronto seen as a metaphor for the unconscious. Great stuff. The National Film Board was so enthusiastic that it threw $140,000 behind this effort.

I have not found a Canadian yet who agreed with the National Film Board, but that is how the money is being spent and it goes on. Strange Invaders , a portrayal of a happy couple who feel blessed by the sudden arrival of a small child—is that not wonderful—until they realize the child is an alien from outer space. Trash. Absolute, unadulterated trash which cost us $71,135.

Then we are back into pornography. A few weeks ago we had Bubbles Galore which cost us $55,000. The movie did win an award. It won the best film award at the Freakzone International Festival of Trash Cinema. It is right up there as the worst of trash or the best of trash, whichever way one wants it.

Now there is Stolen Moments , a film which combines the hidden aspects of lesbian history and of contemporary lesbian life and culture featuring well known lesbians for $40,000 hard-earned Canadian taxpayers' dollars down the drain.

My waste report goes on.

In 1997 the auditor general published a report about the Small Business Loans Act. He said this was going to cost us big time. The reason it was going to cost us big time was that the Liberal government increased the amount of money a person could borrow to 100% of the cost of what the person was trying to buy. For example, if someone wanted to buy a large piece of equipment costing $100,000, every prudent lender not just in the country but in the world would say “Put your money down and maybe we will help you to finance the rest”. But no, the government said the lender would give the person 100% of the cash and he or she would not have to put in a nickel. It was that simple. Is this good business? It is going to cost the taxpayer a bundle.

In the province of Quebec a franchisor had this great idea about selling hot dogs. To set up a hot dog franchise, between $25,000 and $50,000 had to be paid for the privilege of getting the franchise right to sell hot dogs. The franchisor put this money in his pocket. He collected $2.15 million, thank you very much, and he is gone. But the money he got had been borrowed from the bank and secured by the Small Business Loans Act. The taxpayer ended up paying over $3 million. One has to wonder if this thing was even legitimate.

Prudent lending? We have to question the competence of the bank manager. Obviously the franchisor had got the measure of this bank manager and convinced him it was a hot deal for hot dogs. One branch alone gave out 30 of these franchises and they all went bad. We picked up the tab. The auditor general told us about it in 1997 and the fruits are coming home.

It goes on. There are computers with legs on them. In my last waste report I talked about computers with legs. Now we find that even if the computers disappear, even if we know that they are stolen, nothing happens. It is not even reported to the police. They only report it to the police when they have the criminal by the neck. When they know who the criminal is, they tell the cops to arrest the fellow. If they do not know who it is, they say “Well, we guess we do not know who it is”. They do not want any disruption in the office by bringing in the police to say they are losing their computers.

We are paying for that. The taxpayers are paying for that. We are paying for the Senate. We are paying for this. We are paying for waste. We are paying for mismanagement. We are paying through the nose. The House leader gave a great and eloquent defence of the status quo, but we also have a great and eloquent defence of the status quo of mismanagement and waste when it could so easily be tackled.

This very afternoon in the public accounts committee, which I chair, we had officials of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development appear before us. The auditor general had pointed out some serious problems in that department, about how we are spending $6 billion a year through the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Health Canada and so on, which is going right into the pockets of the first nations people. I have no problem helping them, but I would like to help them get up on their own feet.

When I read in the paper that some chiefs are collecting a salary in excess of $167,000 a year, tax free, and the people they are supposed to govern have absolutely nothing, and DIAND does not seem to care about it, and they admitted as much in committee this afternoon, I get a little upset. That taxpayer money is going straight into the coffers of the people who are supposed to administer it on behalf of the people they govern. They are robbing them blind and taking it for themselves. It is criminal. It cannot be allowed to continue. Yet the Liberals continue to allow it. We wonder why we keep having to pay more and more money in that direction. We need accountability.

In democracy two fundamental things are openness and transparency, where the books and the records are open for public inspection. We have had the situation in the last few weeks with the Prime Minister and whatever has been going on with the grants and so on in his riding. Openness and transparency are absolutely fundamental to a healthy democracy.

I asked the departmental officials this afternoon why it is that the financial statements of these first nations reserves are not made public. I got the answer. It is because they may have a small proprietorship or business, or whatever, and when they prepare consolidated financial statements that contain, built in there somewhere, buried in the numbers, revenues and expenditures pertaining to private business, then the whole thing has to be kept under wraps. The Privacy Act prevails, which says it cannot be made public.

Yet when I asked them if they could not separate government from private business, as we do in in the rest of Canada, as we do in the rest of the world, they said “Perhaps we could think about it so that we would be able to publish the financial statements of first nations which consider themselves to be government”. DIAND considers them to be government, and yet DIAND tolerates a situation where their financial statements and records and mismanagement are kept under wraps because of one little quirk that could be fixed any time the government wanted. The status quo is disgusting on Senate reform, in the way the Liberals handle first nations, in the way they tolerate waste and mismanagement and in the way that the whole government conducts its business.

Back in 1995 when we were voting on supply, as we will be voting on supply later this evening, we had about 150 votes to go. We thought we were going to be here all night and well into the next morning. We reached a compromise with the government that we would form a committee to address the situation, to bring some sanity and modern thinking, some accountability and governance into the management of the estimates.

The deputy whip, who was the chair of the committee, myself, a member of the Bloc and others worked on a committee and produced a report on the business of supply. It called for three fundamental things. First, that we as parliamentarians be given the right to move money from within a department from initiative a to initiative b if we felt that was appropriate because we are parliamentarians and we should have that kind of authority. We oversee government. Second, that we create an estimates committee to review on an ongoing, year round basis the estimates and the proposed spending of government. Third, that we introduce what is called program evaluation to look at the $100 billion in spending that will not be voted on this evening.

Program evaluation asks four fundamental questions of all program spending. It asks what is the public policy that the program is trying to achieve, which is fairly simple and yet it does not exist. Canadians say they cannot believe that the public policy of programs is not articulated.

Second, it goes on to ask how well this public policy is being addressed. Once that is articulated we can measure it. However, the government does not want to measure it. It just thinks that as long as it blithely spends the money and throws money at the wall some will stick. Waste and mismanagement is everywhere. Surely we could make progress.

It goes on to say that we should look at the efficiency of program delivery. Can we achieve the same results in a different way?

After two years of hard work we finally got the government response to the committee's all-party suggestions and recommendations, which it dismissed out of hand and said “No, we cannot change. It is too much of an effort to change. We do not want to bring accountability into government. We do not want to have to answer to Canadians about how their money is being spent”.

That is about the same response we had from the government House leader on his defence of the Senate. It was a defence of the status quo. The response to the business of supply was a defence of the status quo. “We do not want to change, even though we know how to change. We can change and we know that change will save billions of taxpayer dollars. It will give a more focused program delivery”. The government says it does not even want to hear about it. It reminds us of the three monkeys: hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil.

The government has the responsibility to manage the country. It has the responsibility to govern the country and it is abdicating that responsibility every day.

[Lorne Nystrom, NDP, Qu'Appelle, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the hon. member who I know is very interested in making sure that the books are frugal, that they are well kept, that we do not waste money and so on.

I know that many in his party advocate the idea of a triple E Senate: elected, equal and effective. Prior to the Charlottetown accord a lot of us took a very serious look at that idea. Theoretically it is an interesting idea.

There was a compromise by the three parties in the House of Commons at that time that we advocate an elected Senate based on proportional representation. That went to the first ministers, who changed what we had recommended. They came up with a different formula for an elected Senate, which would have had some powers, but it would not have been very effective, and there was some equality in it. Of course, that was turned down in the referendum. It would have taken the unanimous consent of the provinces, in any event, to implement it.

The hon. member is a frugal man and wants to look after the public purse. We spend roughly $60 million a year on the existing Senate. In all these years, try as we might, we have never had a solution and a consensus as to how we would reform the other place, which has to be done through the amending formula.

How long do we go on trying? It is a bit like the dog chasing its tail. When does it stop? It goes around and around in a circle, and every time it goes around we spend another $60 million on a House that is not elected, not democratic and not accountable. In fact, the chairman of its internal economy committee would not even appear before the industry committee of the House of Commons to be accountable for the expenditures of the Senate.

With great respect to the ideas he has espoused in the past about a triple E Senate, how long would he suggest we keep on waiting before we try the other alternative of just abolishing it altogether and saving that $60 million?

I think we may be stuck in the end with either the status quo, which we have had for over 130 years, or building a national consensus, which is growing toward abolition.

I remember during Meech Lake and even the Charlottetown accord that support for abolition, according to the polls, was around 21% or 23%. The hon. member from Sarnia is confirming that. About a year ago, it was about 45%. About 45% want to reform it but, again, people who want to reform it have all kinds of different formulae. Bert Brown wants triple E. Somebody else wants one E, which is elected. Somebody else wants the house of the provinces or the house of the federation. One may want more powers. One may want fewer powers. The hon. member from Calgary may want a mixture of powers. We could never find consensus.

How long do we let this dog chase its tail before we say “Let us put a stop to it”? The hon. member is a watchdog on finances and I anticipate his response.

[John Williams, Reform, St. Albert, AB]

How long do we wait, Mr. Speaker? In the greater scheme of things, the Reform Party is a very young party, having been around for only 12 years.

The idea of Senate reform, by and large, started with the Reform Party, which brought it to the national stage and to the national agenda. In 12 years we have moved it from the idea that a few people agreed with to the national agenda.

As the House knows, our party has gone from being strictly an idea to today when it is sitting in the House as the official opposition. I know they are trembling over there because the day will come when we will trade places. At that time the hon. member from Qu'Appelle may find that he does not have to wait any more and that the time will have arrived for Senate reform.

[John Herron, Progressive Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I must say that I enjoyed, for the most part, the comments of my hon. colleague from the Reform Party in terms of what he was espousing, the concept of a triple E Senate.

With respect to having the upper chamber elected, for me that is a non-starter. If we asked, most Canadians would say that if there is going to be an upper chamber then it should be an elected chamber.

[John Williams, Reform, St. Albert, AB]

He is a Tory.

[John Herron, Progressive Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

That is not exactly a unifying kind of comment that I am hearing from my hon. colleague. I am sure he actually shares some of the sentiments I am trying to express, so I would hope that he would give me the courtesy to be able to express those very concerns.

The hon. member believes that the origin of Senate reform started in 1987, out of the blue, and that nobody was even concerned with the fact that the Senate was not elected until 1987 when the Reform Party started. Would he think in his heart of hearts that there were possibly other individuals in this country who espoused an elected Senate prior to 1987? I would like to tell him that when I was in university I was one individual who espoused that.

[John Williams, Reform, St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, we have to think about these non-starters. The Reform Party, as I said, coalesced opinion in the country to bring the idea of Senate reform to the public agenda.

The hon. member talks about the fact that he was on to Senate reform a long time ago, but his leader sat in the prime minister's chair in the House and did nothing about Senate reform. His party was in power numerous times in the past and did nothing about Senate reform.

The current Prime Minister is on record on numerous occasions before he became Prime Minister as saying that he advocated Senate reform, but he blithely forgets about it now.

As I said, we are making progress because now we have the government House leader also saying that he favours an elected Senate.

I know the hon. member for Regina—Qu'Appelle thinks that co-opting one government member every five years is pretty slow progress, and I have to agree, but if we change places I can see it moving a lot faster.

In response to the hon. member's comment, he has to be serious and recognize that the Reform Party raised the agenda of Senate reform.

[Rob Anders, Reform, Calgary West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to pose a challenge to my hon. colleague. I am going to cite two quotes and I am going to ask the hon. member to tell me who made these statements. A certain individual who sits in the House said on February 2, 1990 in front of a reporter with the Windsor Star and 600 people in Edmonton: “I am not interested in patronage because I am a Liberal”. This same individual, on page 196 of a book entitled Straight from the Heart , published in 1985, said:

I didn't want to be trapped in making decisions on patronage, local contracts, and appointments that cause so much friction and bad blood.

I do not want to be too vague on this. I also want to say that this individual who sits in the House has appointed a former Liberal member of Parliament, William Rompkey; has appointed a former Liberal premier of Prince Edward Island, Catherine Callbeck; has appointed another former MP, Jean Robert Gauthier; has appointed former Liberal candidates in New Brunswick for the Liberal leadership race there; and, has appoint prominent people in the Trudeau cabinet. The list goes on to include prominent B.C. Liberal organizers who are golfing and business buddies of this individual who sits right across the House.

Now that I have given this information, I would like to see if the hon. member can guess who that individual is.

[John Williams, Reform, St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, when one is on national television it is very hard to be posed with these very tough questions without any preparation whatsoever. However, I will make a stab at it. As members know, I did not grow up in this country so I do not know my history, but I think I know who the hon. member is referring to. Am I correct in saying that it is the member for Saint-Maurice, the Right Hon. the Prime Minister?

[Rob Anders, Reform, Calgary West, AB]

It was that obvious.

[John Williams, Reform, St. Albert, AB]

I got it right. Hallelujah, one for me.

[Roger Gallaway, Liberal, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, from the beginning of this evening we were told that this is not a debate about Senate reform or Senate abolition, and I agree. This is a debate about the supply motion. In about two and a half hours we are going to start voting on those supply motions. The first item we are going to vote on is the $30,051,000 which is the allocation for the Senate of Canada.

We are being told that the Senate is a legitimate body. Legally, that is absolute correct. The Senate of Canada today is legally a legitimate body. It is half of the Parliament of Canada. The Senate of Canada today is politically an illegitimate body, and that is what is creating the clash here. There is a clash in a sense between the two solitudes, one at this end of the building called the House of Commons, and the other at the red chamber, the other place.

What we are being asked to pass judgment on today by voting for these estimates is, in my opinion, what is reasonable and what is correct. If we flash back 132 years, we will know that when the Senate was created it was created by the British parliament after negotiations with our Fathers of Confederation who were beholden to the British House of Commons.

Out of that process came two chambers, the Senate and the House of Commons, the Senate being the mirror image, or the clone of the House of Lords and being populated with the elite of this country, and that was true in 1867. The Senate was better educated, more worldly and more outward looking. By and large, senators were better off. That was very acceptable. They were socially and educationally legitimate and they were, in a sense, politically legitimate having regard to 1867. We were, by and large, a society which was trying to emulate in its governance the British system which had a House of Lords and a House of Commons. Let us consider that in 1867 the House of Commons, this very place, was populated by people who were less educated, were perhaps a little rough around the edges, were less outward looking and were in fact what we would call today very provincial people.

If we flash ahead 132 years, much has changed in the country. In 1867 it was thought that the Senate would be a check. It would be the brakes on the House of Commons. It would be the brakes on the excesses of the House of Commons. It would be the constitutional arbiter of the House of Commons because at that time, being a new country, we were beginning to explore what were the divisions of powers and what were the rights of the federal government versus the rights of the provincial governments. The Senate was there to be a constitutional court, a constitutional check on this place called the House of Commons.

We had no supreme court in 1867. That would not come until the days of Alexander Mackenzie in the 1870s. We had very little in the way of checks on the House, and hence it was the Senate's job to do that.

We move ahead 132 years and what do we have? We have the Supreme Court of Canada which came into existence in 1949. Until that point, we still sent our appeals to the Privy Council in Great Britain.

We have a number of agreements which are checks on the House of Commons, such as agreements on federal-provincial relations in trade, NAFTA and the WTO. They are all checks on the House of Commons. For those who doubt that, I would invite them to look at Bill C-29 that was passed by the House and the Senate. It was thrown out because it was deemed to not be within the powers of the Parliament of Canada, in particular the House of Commons, because it offended federal-provincial agreements.

There are many checks today on the House of Commons, but I would suggest that the Senate is not one of them. As we know, the Senate today is less educated than the House of Commons. The Senate only works about 66 half days a year. Just this past week a local newspaper stated that the attendance record for senators at committee meetings versus members of the House of Commons were quite dismal. We have a rather dispirited group of people where history has passed them by. Political legitimacy has passed them by. However, they are still in a place where they have legal legitimacy. They are there and they have “a job” to do.

If we look at the history of the Senate of Canada, we will know that there has been but one change in that place in 132 years. That change was made by former Prime Minister Pearson in 1968 when it was deemed that senators who had originally been appointed for life would only be appointed to age 75.

If we compare that to what occurred in Great Britain in 1919, the British government moved to cut in half, some would say, the powers of the House of Lords. The House of Lords today is under full attack by the government of that country. There is massive change and it looks like they are going to disappear with time.

We have had this institutional stagnation in Canada, in particular in the other place, to the point where it is still legally correct and legally legitimate, but politically no one believes it.

We have heard reference to polls today. My colleague from Regina—Qu'Appelle referred to an Angus Reid poll earlier that says that about 90 to 95% of Canadians recognize that the other place is politically and totally illegitimate. Five per cent of people either do not know or are willing to accept it. I understand that.

If we go to the one big difference between the House of Commons and the other place, we will know that although the other place has powers tantamount to this place, when it comes to the appropriation of dollars we have the exclusive domain. We know that last year the Senate year had a budget increase of a little more than 10%. We also know that the chair of the internal economy board in the other place has tabled a budget which calls for an increase this year of 6.1%. If members look at the actual document they will see that it shows $30 million.

To follow up on a speech made by the government House leader earlier, he pointed out that we cannot do anything about some of this because we already voted for it. That is correct. That was the salary increase for senators, which was passed earlier this year, but that does not appear in the estimates and has nothing to do with the estimates. It is statutory requirements. The $30 million we are talking about is the $9,000 housing allowance that was voted on by senators for themselves for this year. That is $9,000 to live in Ottawa, when they are only here for 65 or 66 days in total, and for the operation of the Senate.

We heard from the government House leader that the Senate had to raise the salaries for its staff, and we understand that.

If one looks at the estimates and at the speech, the only speech made in the Senate with respect to its budget—there was but one speech made in that place—we would see that it is not $3 million going toward salary increases but about half of that. It is about $1.5 million in salary increases. The other $1.5 million is going into that black hole called services in the Senate.

The Senate estimates have eight headings, such as information and rentals. What does this all mean? I have no idea what it means. However, the fact is the House of Commons is the place that has to approve appropriations. Tonight we are being asked to blindly approve a 6.1% increase for the other place.

It is easy to say that senators are doing their job. I have no disagreement with that. They have a job to do and it is in our constitutional framework. It was set in stone in 1867. However, I think we can have a legitimate debate in the country on whether we are going to abolish the Senate, have a triple E Senate, or have a single E Senate. I totally agree with that and I think my position is well known.

However, are we to blindly approve a 6.1% increase because the other place has said that it needs the money? We must not put this into the context that because they have requested it we, in the House of Commons, must blindly give it to them. Let us put it in the context of what is reasonable, reasonable under current economic circumstances, reasonable in making a comparison to other sectors of the economy and reasonable in terms of what the Canadian public, who will ultimately pay for this, would say is the case.

If we clearly look, we will see that nobody in the country is getting 6.1%. There is nobody in the country getting 6.1% save and except the Senate of Canada.

We should not talk about this being an all or nothing proposition. It is clearly not that. What the government House leader failed to point out is that there are three motions for amendment on the Order Paper. One of the motions calls for zero dollars for the Senate. The second one calls for zero dollars to the Senate. I understand both of these motions, but the third motion states that we should limit the Senate's increase to 2%, which would represent an increase of about $1.5 million.

What are we looking at in the Senate? According to the chair of the Senate's internal economy board, the Senate needs about $1.5 million to meet its budgetary increases in terms of employees. I think we can all understand and agree with that. People in the public service have certainly not had raises for a number of years. I do not think it is unreasonable to give them a 2% increase? I also do not think it is an issue that the Canadian public would feel offended by.

By and large I do not think anyone in the Canadian public will react to a 2% raise for employees whether they work on Parliament Hill or for someone else in the country, especially having regard to the history of limited increases for some time now.

However there is a big but that I want to emphasize and underline. Is 6% reasonable having regard to the fact that in the past year they had 10%? Is 6% reasonable, knowing full well that the chair of the internal economy board of the Senate has said that they are asking for 6.1% today but do not think it will be enough and will have to get more before the fiscal year is out?

Although I have said that the Senate is legally legitimate I think it is politically illegitimate. That is my opinion. If we cannot debate parliamentary reform in this place, I do not know where we can do it. If this is a body which is legally legitimate, which it is, should it not act in a reasonable fashion?

All Canadians ask is that their political institutions be reasonable. Should that place, which has a very limited function today, not send a signal? Should it not be a symbol? Should it not send a message to all Canadians that it understands money is hard to come by, that it has a constitutional obligation or duty to fulfil, and that it will do it in a fashion which does not increase the demands upon the public purse in an unacceptable fashion?

In many cases we get back to what I term as the test of reasonableness which comes from making comparisons with other sectors of the economy. I have noted that no one is getting this kind of increase whatsoever.

The Senate says it is doing its job. I think to a certain extent it has a function to perform. I learned earlier today that it has found strange ways of spending the $30,051,000 that it requested and has already started to spend.

Earlier today I was pleased to participate in a demonstration in front of this building with colleagues from other parties in the House. I learned from certain media representatives that the Senate was concerned about the demonstration. In fact it was so concerned that it hired two public relations gurus to spin its story. Today the Senate of Canada used public money to spin its side of the story.

One would think that a legislative body which is under attack from all directions would try to be prudent, would try to be circumspect, and would change its behaviour in some way. I do not know. To find out today that questions being posed by reporters to those who participated came from media gurus or public relations and media relations agents which were hired by the Senate is an interesting, bizarre and pathetic set of circumstances. If that is the way that place uses its money, let us pull it back, recognizing that it needs some money to fulfil its constitutional obligation but not 6.1%.

We have the right in this place to pass judgment on appropriation. As noted earlier, the chair of the internal economy board of the other place refused point blank to appear before a House of Commons standing committee to answer some simple questions. His comment as reported in the press was “I account to the public” That is very easy to say but the public knows that is not the case in any way.

The same member of the other place has been quoted as saying that they do legitimate work and that they clarify and improve legislation from the House of Commons. Is it not interesting that when the Senate makes an amendment to a bill it is deemed to be a clarification issue or an improvement issue? Is it not interesting that we would allow a group of people who apparently are now a house of distinguished Canadians the right to pass judgment on what the elected officials have decided?

Is it not interesting that after 132 years we have all corners of the country crying out for change to this legally legitimate body? We can argue that change at another time. Yet it uses that institutional shield to protect itself from change.

I am not talking about profound change in the sense of downsizing. We cannot change its constitutional mandate. I am talking about change in terms of consumption of money, change in terms of being open to the public, change in terms of working with the House of Commons when it comes to its budget, and change in terms of answering the questions that the elected people will be asked to pass judgment on tonight. We are being told by the Senate that we have no choice. The appointed body will say that we will pass it or else. We will pass it or it will have a work stoppage.

It is a sad commentary that 132 years after Confederation we are still living in a society where the elected representatives of the people are being held hostage by a group of 104 people who have no political legitimacy. Therefore I ask members tonight, especially those in the Conservative Party, to seriously consider what they are doing when they vote for Senate appropriation.

[John Solomon, NDP, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask my Liberal colleague a question about the Senate. As he knows, the New Democratic Party supports the abolition of the Senate because it is unelected. As a matter of fact the people who occupy the Senate are friends of former prime ministers and the current Prime Minister.

Senators are appointed to age 75, and 104 of them and their staff spend about $55 million a year. They have no accountability to anyone. They do not have to go to constituencies to report on what they have been doing on their behalf. They do not do much of behalf of people unless it is a very wealthy family or a very large corporation.

Has my Liberal colleague ever heard of someone by the name of Jim Balfour? Perhaps he could nod his head yes or no.

He has never heard of Mr. Balfour. We have a senator by the name of James Balfour who was appointed 20 years ago by Joe Clark. He was a friend of the then prime minister. He is a Conservative who comes from my home town in Regina.

I have been involved in the public community of Regina for 26 years and I have never met this person. Nor have any of the 6,000 people to whom I have talked. They have never heard of this guy who is a senator representing Saskatchewan, let alone Regina. Over the years Mr. Balfour has an attendance record of maybe 18% or 23% depending on the year we are looking at.

Does the Liberal member opposite, who also supports the abolition of the Senate, believe that there should be more accountability for the people who are there now? Perhaps they should go back to their cities and provinces on occasion to meet one or two people, at least once or twice a year, so that people know they are alive and maybe doing something progressive for the country.

Would the Liberal member comment on Mr. Balfour, the phantom senator from Regina?

[Roger Gallaway, Liberal, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from the NDP for his question. I must say that I have never heard of this individual. It is not my habit to comment on individuals from the other place.

I want to respond in general to his question. Let us look to other places, other parliaments that have had senates, houses of lords or like bodies. We are the only country in a parliamentary democracy which has an appointed body, save and except Malaysia, a great democracy, which has a strictly appointed upper chamber.

If we look at other parliamentary democracies we find that they are tied to performance. If one gets to the upper chamber by some appointment route or by the election route, it is tied to one's presence.

The House of Lords is identical to our Senate in terms of accountability. It has imposed that its members have to show up to get paid. Here they get paid and if they do not show up a little bit is taken off. In Britain, one who by accident of birth is in the House of Lords has to show up to get paid. It is tied to performance.

I recognize there are people in the other place who believe they represent their regions. I come from southwestern Ontario. For the last two years we have had a senator from southwestern Ontario. Southwestern Ontario is a very densely populated area. We have a senator who lives maybe 100 miles from me. He is a fine man. He is a nice gentleman. I like him and all that. It is nothing to do with him, but he no more represents the region than Senator Balfour does the region of southwestern Ontario.

Senators are today representative of what I believe to be special interest groups. It is nothing more, nothing less.

[Rob Anders, Reform, Calgary West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I had the honour today to participate in a rally on Parliament Hill with several of my colleagues, including the hon. member across the way.

I would like to pose a question to my hon. colleague. I remember having taken part in committee meetings with regard to the whole idea of accountability. I remember very well refusals by representatives from the Senate to speak to the accountability of that body.

Let us analyse it. Is the Senate accountable to the taxpayer? I do not happen to think so because I do not think taxpayers would approve a 16% budget increase over two years when the House of Commons gets 2% and generally government operations get 3%. I cannot think of anyone who would make such demands, especially under the circumstances when the Senate works 66 half days a year.

I then look at it in terms of whether or not the Senate is accountable to the House of Commons. According to the Senate it is not accountable to the House of Commons. That is one of the reasons it is willing to raise its budgets, not be accountable to anybody else, and say that it will go ahead and hold hostage the House of Commons and push for work stoppages in this place if we try to call it into question.

The Senate always likes to say that it is not accountable to the Prime Minister either. I could go through all the appointments various prime ministers including this current one have made, but once they are appointed they say they are no longer accountable to the Prime Minister.

I do not believe that the Senate is accountable to taxpayers. I do not believe the Senate is accountable to the House of Commons. I do not believe the Senate is accountable to the Prime Minister. To whom is it accountable?

[Roger Gallaway, Liberal, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Calgary West for that most interesting question.

I agree the Senate is not accountable to taxpayers. There is absolutely no question about that whatsoever. Is it accountable to the House of Commons? The senators have sent a message through the chair of the internal economy board of the other place that that individual would not appear before a standing committee of the House of Commons to explain the Senate budget, to in some way answer some very rudimentary questions about the budget tabled in the other place.

Are they accountable to the Prime Minister? I think the answer is no but we could argue about that. If we go back in time and look at the list of appointments, there are people who were appointed in the seventies. I do not know if there are any left from the sixties but certainly there are some from the seventies, the eighties and into the early nineties. Of course they were accountable to other prime ministers but they have come and gone.

The open ended question is are we going to put up with a body that is unaccountable and that continues to demand relatively large sums of money for rather obtuse purposes? I think my position on it is well known.

[Rob Anders, Reform, Calgary West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I pose another question to my hon. colleague. Can he think of another job, any job, where one would be able to work 66 half days a year and get a salary in excess of $64,000 plus $12,000 in an expense account and then over $10,000 in a non-receiptable expense account, which basically amounts to a payout because no receipts have to be given for it? I would like my hon. colleague to let us know if he can think of any other job where somebody could enjoy for 66 half days a year those types of benefits, and more than that that someone could serve for one day—

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

I am sorry, but the hon. member for Sarnia—Lambton is only going to have 30 seconds to think of that.

[Roger Gallaway, Liberal, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know what the hon. member is saying in his question. The total benefit package for a senator in terms of cost to the public is about $100,000 plus travel which includes 64 return trips and a VIA Rail pass. It is quite a large number of dollars. The answer is that the only other person in this country who probably has an equivalent lifestyle is someone who has won a very large lottery. That is the only person I can think of.

[Lorne Nystrom, NDP, Qu'Appelle, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I will say a word or two about the motion before the House. We are being asked to vote tonight on a motion by the government to reinstate the spending estimates for the Senate of Canada for $30,051,000. That is roughly half of what the Senate spends in a year. The other roughly $30 million is in other votes that will be taken later on tonight. The Senate costs about $60 million a year.

[John Solomon, NDP, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Over 10 years.

[Lorne Nystrom, NDP, Qu'Appelle, SK]

A year, and it goes up almost every year. Last year it went up by some 10%. The year before it went up by some 6%. That makes 16% over two years.

[John Solomon, NDP, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

That is a lot.