Mr. Speaker, to give my hon. colleague two straightforward responses, when I talk about four levels of government, I am talking about municipal, provincial, federal and now we have the upper House. On top of that, we also have the courts which play a very large role. How governed do we need to be in this country, especially when members of one level of government, as I said, are friends of the party?
In terms of the question of these attempts, these baby steps, by the Conservative Party, the conundrum is that it cannot actually move to the electing of senators, because that will trigger a constitutional challenge, so it has set up a consultation process.
The problem with this process, at the end of the day, is that participatory democracies in any country in the western world, in fact anywhere in the world right now, recognize that there is no such thing as a consultation for an election. We are either elected or we are not. We cannot ask people if they think these six candidates might be good, and then it is at the desire of the Prime Minister whether to accept them or not. That simply does not pass the smell test.
When we talk about democratic reform, we are dealing, I think unfortunately, with the old Reform Party, but not democratic. Democratic has to be a voting proposition. It has to be mandatory. It cannot be at the whim of the Prime Minister. That is the problem. That would trigger the constitutional challenge.
I get back to the Gordian knot that we are facing. It is an outrageous situation we are in that Canadians cannot have reform of the Senate without it becoming a major constitutional challenge. It will basically return us to the old status quo, which is that friends of the Liberal Party and friends of the Conservative Party, who have done favours over the years, get dumped in the Senate.
We are in a real conundrum, so I understand where the Conservatives are coming from, but at the end of the day, if it is to be truly democratic where these elections are binding, we will end up with a constitutional challenge.