Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's reflections on the experiences of parliamentary reform elsewhere. Let me just say I find troublesome the use of the term modernization in the context of the House because for some reason the government has an aversion to the use of the conventional word reform.
Modernization I would submit is precisely the problem. It implies rendering the operation of the House more efficient, that is to say faster. Often the only tactic at the disposal of the opposition to express dissent or opposition on behalf of Canadians toward government legislation is to cause this place to move more slowly and deliberatively.
I would submit that the fact to which he attested, that the Westminster mother parliament is in many respects more democratic and a more deliberative body, and a much older one, supports my thesis that we need to reform this place, not necessarily to modernize it if that means rendering its processes more efficient.
I would like to ask the member a specific question. Given that he has been a student of the Westminster parliament recently and that the broader question of parliamentary reform encompasses reform of the other place and not just this House, perhaps the member would care to comment on the following.
The convention in the British Parliament is that the prime minister is not the only public official to submit to the sovereign names for peerages to the upper chamber but indeed the opposition parties in the lower house, in the House of Commons at the Westminster Parliament, also are permitted to submit names for appointments to the upper chamber. Would the member care to comment on the fact that in that sense the British appointed and quasi-hereditary House of Lords is substantially more democratic and representative of the plurality of modern political choices than is our Senate?