Madam Speaker, there are some things which one can set one's clock by.
Certainly, the predictability of the response from my friends in the New Democratic Party with respect to the subject of the Senate is well known. I can only tell the hon. member that I would have thought that having served in a provincial institution, as I have, that he knows very well the provincial situation in every province.
We are a federal country. Every federal country in the world has a second chamber. Some of them are elected. Some of them are appointed. Some of them are half-appointed and half-elected. Some of them are elected on a proportional basis. Some of them are elected by the provincial chambers. There is a whole variety of techniques by which second chambers are chosen.
I have made it clear that I am not defending the status quo. I am simply looking at what I know is the government's agenda, which I am surprised the member would support. I would suspect that the Premier of Newfoundland would be very troubled by a unilateral change in the Constitution of Canada, and an attempt to do that by the reformists on the other side of the chamber. I would be very surprised if that were something that he thought was a great idea. I would be stunned if Premier Charest was in favour of it, or indeed if any provincial premier thought this was a wonderful idea.
We are discussing a very modest proposal on the face of it, which is to deal with the question of ethics, but it is not just a question of ethics. It is the question of the extent to which we respect the independence of the other chamber.