Mr. Speaker, I enter this debate with great pleasure but also with great remorse because of the intellectual dishonesty that is being perpetrated by the government in bringing forward this bill at this time.
There is a reason that I make such harsh judgment of the government. I know it is not easy and there are certain government members who endeavour to provide honourable discourse and dialogue in this place. Yet when looking through the many pages of Bill C-20, Canadians might be left with the impression that the government is actually serious about Senate reform, somehow serious about democratic reform. This goes back to the days of the Reform Party and then the Canadian Alliance and various incarnations in between in speaking to what I believe was a sincere desire among Canadians to see some sort of accountability in all levels of office.
If the rules that were given to the Senate were applied to any other official body in this country, Canadians would be absolutely disgusted. They would be unable to understand why we would allow such an important function of government to run amok and have so few rules guiding its own merit and conduct. The ethics rules are not adhered to. On simply showing up for work, the attendance is abysmal. Before I entered politics I ran a small business. After looking at the attendance records for some senators, they would not have been hired, or if they had been hired, they certainly would have been let go as soon as possible. They simply do not show up and when they do, their effectiveness is found wanting.
Clearly there is much speculation in the media and by the pundits that we are on the eve of another election. There is potentially a series of confidence votes. The Prime Minister for some delusional reason seems interested in going back to the Canadian people for a mandate.
The government is showing its true colours in desiring an election because it is clearing the decks of all those bills. The Conservatives want to show some small significance of effort back to their base, that oh yes, they are engaged in the issue and here is their evidence and proof.
Lo and behold, like a gopher, Bill C-20 has popped up its head and pretends at some sincere effort. The government lost any momentum for discussion of the bill because it chose to prorogue Parliament. It chose to suspend Parliament which essentially killed all of the bills on the order paper that were in progress, such as its own crime bill and other bills, including this bill as well. All of that time was lost and it is more than two years since the last election.
The government introduced this bill, but allowed it to fall into the black hole of prorogation, a process which few Canadians understand. However, the government understood it well, and the desperate need for another throne speech was its excuse. It set the bill back 12 months or more and lost any kind of serious discussion.
The New Democrats are deeply interested at our core of finding a way to fix the fundamentally flawed institution that is known as the Senate in order to allow Canadians some sense that democracy is functioning and that they are getting value for money. There are 14 vacancies in the Senate and we get no sense of urgency whatsoever from the government to fill those vacancies, because ultimately those positions are filled through patronage appointments. That is the way it is done.
The government seeks credibility on this issue. It seeks to tell Canadians it is sincere about Senate reform and having true representation in the Senate. One of its first acts as a new government, having just run a campaign on accountability, was to appoint Michael Fortier from Montreal to the Senate. That was one of the first things the Prime Minister did after having spent not just weeks but months telling Canadians how sensible and accountable his government would be, how it would clean up the corruption of the Liberals. How many times did we hear it in this place from the Prime Minister and other people in his cabinet that they would not follow the record of the Liberals and not give crony patronage appointments, that they would do it differently?
One of the things the Conservatives were thinking of doing was reforming the Senate. Lo and behold, when given the reins of power, the first thing the Prime Minister decided to do was to force upon the people of Montreal a representative they did not choose. He chose to put someone into the Senate in one of the most important cabinet positions, one which controls billions of taxpayer dollars, someone who cannot be held to account in this place.
When that ministry, under his guidance, runs amok and spends money unaccountably or perhaps wrongly, he cannot be called to account. He simply cannot be given that direction and focus from this place. Canadians cannot see him, at least on the evening news, presenting his opinions in a place that was constructed to do just that. These walls were built and these desks were put in this place for that. Canadians imbued Parliament with the power to be accountable over many things. One is the law and another is the use of taxpayer dollars.
Yet the government has chosen to put an unaccountable, unelected person into the cabinet and stick that person in the Senate in order to get around this little annoyance called democracy, this little discomfort, which is that people in just about every urban centre in this country decided not to elect Conservative members. Rather than actually appeal to those voters in any kind of sensible way and present a platform on urban transit strategy or the serious issues affecting Canadians living in cities, the Conservatives decided that the appointment process was just so much easier. It is just so much easier to appoint someone to the Senate and allow that person to occupy one of the most critical positions in cabinet.
In this bill, despite the many pages and the many clauses and amendments, the government is clearly playing at the margins. It is clearly tinkering at the edges, because at the end of the day, through all the sections on voting, discrepancy and penalties, it still remains the purview and the power of only one person in this country, and that is the Prime Minister, to choose whom he or she will allow to go into the Senate.
When we craft laws in this place, we do not craft them for any particular current representation or any current manifestation of government. We seek to create laws that will last throughout governments, that will stand the test of time and be a good representation of sound thinking.
It is wrong for the government to present a bill with the pretense that perhaps this Prime Minister may choose to honour the wishes of some of the voters who are constructing some electoral options in regard to it being a truly accountable forum and in regard to this bill somehow fixing a fundamental problem. Earlier in the discussion in regard to the functioning of the Senate, I called it an old beat-up jalopy that simply will not start. It simply will not function. The government's solution is a new coat of paint and some air in the tires, perhaps with windshield wipers if they are needed.
Sometimes there were debates and moments in history where, for some miraculous, rare spot in time, the Senate actually performed a function. It actually did something admirable in one of the current policy debates, but those moments are so rare that they remind me of a strange phenomenon I was looking up earlier. I was trying to find the actual taxonomic name of a flower in the Amazon. It buds only once every 25 years. It is quite rare. No one really knows when that is going to happen and it is a news item every time. Everyone rushes to the Amazon, the cameras show up, the flower buds and shows itself, and then quickly disappears again for some unknown period of time.
When I deal with my colleagues in the Senate, as admirable as some of them may be, I find that as an institution there is absolutely no lever to pull on. There is no accountability measure. I can recall before the previous government fell that the House of Commons, in the midst of an energy concern regarding seniors on fixed incomes, sought to pass a piece of legislation that would assist low income seniors with their home heating bills. I am sure all my colleagues who were here at that time remember that debate. We all remember how the parties got together in one of those rare moments in Parliament and decided to pass a bill at all stages and allow the bill to pass on to the Senate.
I met with a senator that day on entirely another issue. He told me to go back to my leadership and tell them that the bill, which we could find all party agreement to, had no guarantee whatsoever of getting through his chamber because the Senate had to be accountable. That senator was a Liberal, and of course he had no determinants of influence or bias whatsoever in terms of what was happening here in this place electorally with his elected colleagues, and he guaranteed me that if we rushed to an election too quickly, he assured me that this bill would not go through, and how dare the NDP bring down his Liberal government.
In fact, it was a bluff, of course. The bill passed and the money was received by needy seniors across the country, but the fact, and the point of this illustration, remains, which is that the accountability of that gentleman to represent this narrow, biased and partisan view, rather than the interests of this country and the people who vote for members in this place, shows what is so fundamentally dysfunctional about what it is the Senate has come to represent, which is a minority representation, protecting minority views, those of the powerful and the elite in this country.