Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak to Bill C-43, An Act to provide for consultations with electors on their preferences for appointments to the Senate.
First, I want to comment on a couple of things. I want to congratulate the Senate for its work on bills as was just mentioned. A bill, no matter how short, can be bad and should be improved and dealt with. The senators should not be bullied into pushing forward a bad bill. I congratulate the senators for their work.
A Conservative member asked about democratic reform in the previous government. The point was made that during the previous government the biggest changes perhaps in history, but at least in modern history, were made to advance democratic reform in the House of Commons. Great credit has to go to the member for LaSalle—Émard who made those changes. I will mention three of them.
First was the increased funding for the Library of Parliament to help members of Parliament to have substantial research input into bills.
Second was the election of committee chairs. This might have emanated from the opposition, but the last government brought it forward. It is distressing that the new government has taken a backward step in democratic reform by revoking that, at least within its party in not allowing elected committee chairs. The democratization of that process was done by the member for LaSalle—Émard.
Probably the greatest reform that really changed the dynamics of the House at the time was the bringing in of the three line whip. It allowed members to take their own positions on a large number of items, confidence motions as they always were, budgets, throne speeches, these types of bills, on which the government has a position. Unfortunately, we have not seen that recently from the government side, but we have certainly seen that democratization on this side of the House with significant input for members to represent their ridings.
Now I would like to get back to Bill C-43. As has been clear on this side of the House, I and other members are definitely in favour of appropriate, rational and comprehensive Senate reform. That is not the issue. Once again, if there is a bad bill, one that does not do the job, obviously we have to either amend it or defeat it.
I am not sure what the Conservative member who was complaining about the stalling of bills has to say about this, but it is surprising that this bill was tabled four months ago and it is only now before us. Why was it sitting around when it could have been brought forward a lot earlier?
The Liberal position is to have full scale comprehensive Senate reform. If we are to reform a body that is complex and which interacts in the legislative process with other bodies, obviously we have to put it all together for it to make sense. When a Ford truck is broken, we do not drop in a Volkswagen engine and assume it will fit and that the truck will start. It will not fit. It is air cooled. We will burn the engine out. We cannot try to make a change to one part.
In this particular case, it is not a change that will be effective. We should not try to make a change which would make the whole system fall apart. It would create more problems than if we looked at the whole situation and how all the parts are interrelated. I will give some examples later in my speech that outline how the different parts of the system would be negatively affected by tinkering with one part without considering the ramifications on the other parts.
It is astonishing that the Conservatives would put forward a bill that would hurt Alberta and British Columbia so much, that would decrease their representation in Canadian affairs. I am sure some Conservative members did not realize this because the individual members did not write the bill, but it is still a fact. We would never, on this side of the House at least, approve a bill that would hurt Alberta and British Columbia so much without making the appropriate adjustments to make sure they were represented.
Some references were made in previous speeches to the Law Reform Commission. This commission did a remarkable study on electoral reform and I will quote from Hansard what was said about the report. One would hope that any bill on electoral reform would look at that expert information and refer to it.
It was stated in Hansard:
The report is perhaps the finest treatment of the question of electoral reform in a modern democracy that has ever been written.
When the official opposition critic asked if any members of the government had read this report, not one member stood. If would seem that if we were designing a bill, we would look at all the intelligence available, especially at the best report ever written. Hopefully, before this debate is over, a Conservative member will stand and say that he or she has read that report and, more important, that it had an effect on this bill before us that has been criticized so much.
Can anyone imagine having the Law Commission of Canada Act, an act of Parliament, disrespected by the government? There are statutory responsibilities under that act to perform services for Canadians. By law, the government must do things for Canadians but the zero funding in the budget is very questionable in relation to the proper functioning of democracy.
Another issue that has been raised in the debate about the bill is, as the deputy House leader from the Conservatives said, that it skirts constitutionality. It may be constitutional and it may not. If the bill gets to committee, we will certainly want to hear from experts on both sides of that issue, to be fair, as to whether changing one piece of a complex system would be constitutional. As all members of the House know, there are certain changes to the Senate that cannot be made in this manner or by simply bringing a bill before the House of Commons.
The other major point is that the bill would not do anything. What would it achieve? The prime minister can already appoint members. In fact, this morning one of the opposition members, in response to a question, made the point that in 1998 Prime Minister Mulroney appointed Stan Waters.
I think westerners would probably be appalled if they knew that the prime minister would not need to follow the results of these elections. If westerners elect someone the prime minister does not like, he would not need to make that appointment. The decision would still be up to him.
Let us be frank: the Conservative government does not really want to change Bill C-43. It just wants to keep an old Conservative promise to its electoral base without really taking the time to reform the Senate. Once again, it is a shame that this government is pursuing its own political agenda at the expense of real reforms that would benefit all Canadians.
I now want to try solving the perplexing question as to why the government would put forward a bill that, as I have outlined, does not change anything and, were it to change anything, it would cause all sorts of other problems.
The reason that has been hypothesized by a number of speakers so far is that the government is trying to appease its western Conservative base which it has upset so much. People might ask why the Conservatives are angry and why they are hastily bringing forward a bill with, as people have outlined, all the flaws to appease that base.
The first reason is that right after the election the Prime Minister appointed Senator Fortier after saying that all appointments would be made on merit. This came as quite a shock to Conservatives across the country but they gave them a second chance. However, it did not last very long.
The second reason is that after speaking adamantly against floor crossing while in opposition and after 40 Conservative members voted against floor crossing in a bill, the Prime Minister appointed a Liberal as a minister before a number of Conservatives who had worked hard for the party. I am delighted that we have a Liberal in cabinet but I think a number of Conservatives were upset about that appointment.
The third reason is the fact that the government has become a huge spender. After telling people for years and ranting against the NDP and others who would spend a lot of money, the Conservatives brought in the biggest spending budget in history.