Mr. Speaker, I should correct myself. In response to the intervention from my colleague from Winnipeg Centre, I said that at committee the member for Ottawa Centre voted against the motion put forward by the Conservatives. It was, I believe, the member for Acadie—Bathurst who voted against it, but nonetheless, it still was an NDP member on the committee who voted against consultations by the committee itself.
With respect to the question of my hon. colleague from Yukon, there are a number of examples, some minor and some fairly major, where senators, after examining a bill that has gone from our place to their place, have come forward with amendments that have strengthened the bill. Sometimes those amendments were technical in nature. Perhaps the wording was slightly flawed. Sometimes they were more substantive.
My point is simply this. If the Senate was doing the job that it purports to do, if it was doing the job that we all want it to do, it would examine legislation coming from this place in a non-partisan manner to see if they could strengthen it.
The purpose of the Senate is not to obstruct legislation, but to examine it for weaknesses and to recommend positive changes. Yet what we see time and time again, by the very nature of senators being unelected and therefore unaccountable, is that they are not looking for ways to strengthen a bill, they are looking for ways in which to obstruct a bill. Again I go back to Bill S-4, a bill that has been before the Senate for close to a year. It is a 66 word bill, yet it has been there for close to a year and there is no end in sight.
That is because, in my view at least, the Liberal senators wish to obstruct this bill. They do not want to see it go forward, despite the views of the majority of members in this place. They are using the powers they have to obstruct legislation when in fact they should be doing just the opposite. They should be looking for ways in which to pass legislation as quickly and as swiftly as they can, while all the time ensuring that the legislation is properly formatted.