Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Windsor—St. Clair raises an important question in the context of this bill. We are dealing with a piece of legislation that was initiated in the House of Commons, went through the process here, was sent to the Senate for approval, where that other place made a small amendment and sent it back to us for our consideration.
Notwithstanding the fact that this amendment makes a slight improvement to the bill, there are serious questions to be raised about the appropriateness of the Senate, with all its difficulties, problems and questionable activities in terms of the legislative process.
Members know that we in this party have long pressed for the abolishment of the Senate. We believe it is a place of patronage and convenience for the government in terms of appointments and it is a place that is costly and does not enhance our democratic process.
That fact is made even more strongly when we look at some of the conflicts of interest that senators find themselves in, in the pursuit of legislative amendments or in the development of public policy. I think specifically of the recent Kirby report and its attempt to outdo the Roy Romanow commission by presenting the blueprint with such speed and haste so the government would feel compelled to lump the Romanow commission and the Kirby report together as one and say that it had all these wonderful recommendations and that it would act on some of them. Of course it leaves the option for the government to do nothing.
In the case of the Kirby report we all have serious questions about Senator Kirby's ties to a personal care home and his interests in private health care. In fact in the end he did not take a firm, strong position against privatization of health care. We could clearly see the results of an aspect to our legislative process where there are no standards, in terms of transparency with respect to lobbying and there are real questions around ethical standards.
We have not only our initial reservations about the role of the Senate in the legislative process but we also now have real concerns about conflicts of interest and ties to corporate interests that do not enhance the legislative process. For those reasons, our case to do away with the Senate is made even stronger, and I would certainly support that today.