Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to speak today to what I consider a very important motion brought forward by the Bloc Quebecois.
I think most Canadians would be quite surprised that the perception of the separatist party bringing forward a most democratic motion for the entire country is one that is worthy of debate. I thank the Bloc very much because I know it is rooted in social democracy. I know it has many policies similar to that of the NDP. I want to thank it for taking the opportunity to use its day in order to raise this very important issue.
It is not too difficult to understand why we are having the debate when we see in Quorum today that the finance minister said in the Ottawa Citizen “MPs should elect governor general”. Why does that same finance minister not say that we should peer review and have a serious look at supreme court judges and the chairmen of various boards?
Recently we saw the member from Malpeque, P.E.I., who I consider to be a very good friend of mine, become the Solicitor General. He admits that he is a farmer by trade and a very proud farmer, but is now, by the appointment of the Prime Minister, the number one top cop in the country. I would never ever stand up in the House to say to the Prime Minister that he cannot appoint people into his cabinet whom he or his ring of people deem fit. What this particular motion talks about are those people on all the boards and agencies outside of the House, one of those, of course, being the Senate.
We have long known that Conservative and Liberal governments have used the Senate for what I call a den of iniquity in terms of putting their people there in order to get things passed. I will not come down too hard on the Tories because I think they are starting to change their tune on this, but Brian Mulroney forced the GST through the Senate by stacking the Senate with his friends to do one thing and one thing only: pass the dreaded GST when it went through the House of Commons. The Liberals in the Senate were going to hold it up but it was then turned around and the GST was passed.