Madam Speaker, I want to respond to something the member said early on in his speech before our little outdoor break. In his opening statements he commented on the Senate and said that it was his view that the Senate ought to be abolished.
Just to add a little light to the argument against that, I would like to point out to him that one of the big grievances that we have in the outlying areas of this country, whether it is Newfoundland and Labrador, the Atlantic provinces or way out west where we come from, is that we are totally electorally overrun by the huge majority in Ontario and Quebec. We have a lot of respect for them and, yes, in this House we have representation by population, but the fact is that when there is an election 60% of the members of Parliament come from those two provinces.
We currently have 301 members and I believe 178 of them come from Ontario and Quebec. We think that if the Confederation is to work smoothly, and for those of us in the outlying regions being defined as outside of Ontario and Quebec, we need some way to balance that power, which is where a triple E Senate would come in. It would have an equal number of senators from each province, or at least from each region, and they would be elected to give them legitimacy. However right now bills cannot become law unless they pass both Houses.
We could even have some other rules engaged there. However if it is a good rule or a good law that is being proposed, I think the senators, who would represent all the provinces equally, would agree to those laws because they would be good for the country. If there were a deliberate attempt, as we have seen on numerous occasions, by the central Canada government to ride roughshod over those of us in the more distant regions, a triple E Senate would provide a good balance of power.
The reason we are promoting the continuation of the Senate is to improve it by making it equal and by making it elected so that it can actually do its work. We would still have population representation here in the House of Commons and Ontario and Quebec would continue, we expect, to dominate this place.