Of sober thought, my colleague adds.
I would just point to very recent times and the role the Senate played in the clarity bill and the role it is currently playing in the anti-terrorism legislation. To somehow equate the method they are chosen by and the legitimacy is, I think, a bit of a stretch.
Senate reform has been an ongoing debate in the country. It is certainly nothing new. The Charlottetown proposal was part of a larger attempt to bring closure to a constitutional issue. Again, I do not think Canadians have an appetite right now to open up that constitutional debate. We might be able to find a collection of people who say the existing system is not meeting whatever needs they define as being important, but I would further suggest that finding a common ground on what that solution should be will prove extremely difficult, not that I do not think that exercise needs to be undertaken.
To go back to the Australian model, what they have with two elected houses is deadlock between the two. In our system the Senate very rarely vetoes bills coming from the House of Commons. It may try to improve them, but it does not exercise its constitutional veto because it understands that the elected body has supremacy.
In Australia it has evolved into two elected bodies, two partisan houses, which do not serve any real purpose. If we are to go down that road then we have to take a serious look at what the NDP is proposing, because an elected Senate, as far as I am concerned, does not make a whole lot of sense in the larger scheme of how government in this country works. In Australia, the other thing that happens with an elected senate is that pressure builds because it is pretty hard to defend the regional allocation of seats or states.
If we look at quotes very recently by one of the Australian senators from Tasmania, he himself said that he could no longer defend the fact that a small state like Tasmania is given equal representation as larger states.
Again I would just caution my hon. colleague that on the surface it may look like a good idea but the unintended consequences have to be taken into consideration.
In terms of Senate reform and what people mean by Senate reform, that too has evolved over time. Until very recently, Senate reform proposals and motions in this place and the other place have focused on what the Senate does and reforming that appointed body. Very recently Senate reform has become absolutely fixated on the election of senators and how they are chosen. It somehow equates that method of selection with legitimacy in terms of the role they play in the government.
I do not know what the issue is that the member has with the appointment process. We appoint the judiciary in the country as is done at the federal level in the United States. It is not an uncommon system. The role of the Senate is clearly defined and it performs that role well. I firmly believe that if we were to go ahead and make this one change we would be eroding regional representation. We would have a hard time convincing colleagues from Atlantic Canada that it is a good idea.
Let us look at what the current Senate is made up of. Right now about one-third of the senators are women compared to about one-fifth of the MPs in this House. Which is more representative of Canada? It is the highest percentage of women in any Canadian legislative body. In fact it is the fifth highest of any legislative body in the world.
There are politicians from the House of Commons, from provincial legislatures, municipal politicians, lawyers, doctors, religious leaders, musicians, hockey players, farmers, teachers, journalists, business people, federal and provincial civil servants, men and women with deep roots in volunteer and political activities. Their average age is about 12 years older than the average age in the House of Commons. They bring considerable experience and life experiences.