Mr. Speaker, the official position of the NDP is that the Senate should be abolished. I do not share that view. I have different views. I think the Senate can be salvaged and that we should have a bicameral system of government in Canada, but what the Senate has done with Bill C-2 makes it very difficult for me to say that the Senate has any merit or should be staying in any form. The Senate has overstepped its boundary. It has interfered with this bill in a way that is far beyond what senators are mandated to do.
Let me simply and by example say that even though there was great urgency to Bill C-2 and even though we wanted the bill to be passed in the first session of this Parliament, the Senate took the entire three month summer break. When the Senate came back for a week, it lost another full week of work because one of the senators had to be on a parliamentary junket to the Philippines. One senator was on a beach in the Philippines and we had another week's delay for Bill C-2. How can that be defended? It simply cannot.
As well, many of the amendments that the Senate has put forward simply put the Senate's nose into business where it has no place being. In regard to the public appointments commission, some of the amendments put forward by the Senate say that the Senate should have a role in the process of appointing those commissioners. That is simply problematic. It is unclear if it is a constitutional issue.
Much of what the Senate did was self-aggrandizing. Fully 43 of the Senate's 154 amendments dealt with this separate ethics commissioner, as to whether there should be one, two or three ethics commissioners. It was all about the senators. It was not about making the bill better. It was all about protecting their own backyard.
I think the Senate wasted an enormous amount of time. I do not apologize to anyone for saying it. I think it was political mischief so that the Senate could delay this bill until the Liberals have had their Liberal leadership campaign. Those Liberal leadership hopefuls should fall in line now, show some leadership and tell their rogue senators to stop mucking around with this bill and allow it to pass.