Mr. Speaker, I certainly agree with the member for Calgary West that there has been reckless spending in terms of the other house. I do not have my estimates with me but my recollection is its estimates for the coming year will see the Senate budget go up by 21% or 25%. That is much higher than any other government department or agency I am aware of. It does this without being accountable to anyone.
A year of so ago a few of us, including the member who just spoke, tried to get the chair of the Senate internal economy committee to come before the relevant House of Commons committee to justify its estimates. After all, departments such as agriculture, industry, HRDC or whatever have to. Of course, the senator refused. He said they were not accountable to anybody in the House of Commons. It is not right or proper that the Senate can get this increase in funding without being accountable. I agree with the member on that.
Where the member and I disagree is that the member wants to reform and elect the Senate and I want to abolish the Senate. Public opinion today is split roughly 50:50 between those who want to abolish the Senate and those who want to reform it. That debate should continue. In the last few years public opinion has been shifting more and more toward the abolition side after having gone toward the reform side before. It is a debate well worth pursuing.
The one thing we do agree on is that the existing Senate should go. All the polling I have seen shows that about 5% of the people in the country support the existing Senate. Five per cent would be the senators, their families, a few friends, a few others and not many more.
The member asked me about Bert Brown. I am sure Bert Brown would like to take a seat in the Senate. Why would he not? But that is the wrong way to go because I do not think the place should be reformed and elected. It should be abolished. I am also concerned about the Alberta solution, about the provincial government having elections for the Senate under the present powers and composition of the Senate.
For example, New Brunswick has ten senators and Alberta and B.C. have only six each. If we started electing senators under the present structure and representation in the Senate, what would happen if Ontario and Quebec started to do the same thing? They each have 24 senators. All of a sudden we would be locked into a Senate that is legitimate because its members are elected and Ontario would have 24 senators and Alberta, Saskatchewan, B.C. and Manitoba would have only six each.
We would have a very unfair Senate locked permanently into our structure. That Senate would be elected. Therefore it would be more difficult to change and more difficult to get rid of it because it would have been legitimized by virtue that those people were elected.
If we followed the Alberta solution the existing Senate powers would also be legitimized. Most people do not realize that the Senate has almost as many powers as the House of Commons under the constitution. It does not use them because senators are appointed and are not legitimate. If we were to elect them under the present powers we would have two very strong Houses. We would invite gridlock between the two Houses. Also the Senate would be very unequal in terms of its representation in that New Brunswick with about 600,000 people gets ten senators and British Columbia with three million plus people gets only six senators.
With respect, that is the danger of what Mr. Klein is doing in Alberta in trying to elect senators under the present representation and the present powers. That is almost anti Saskatchewan, anti Albertan in nature because of the population shifts.