Mr. Speaker, most senators have the time to do it because nobody is asking them what they are doing with their time, quite frankly. I have overheard some of them talking to other people. We are always on the brink of an election and when asked if they were worried about an election, the response was, “Oh, no, we don't worry about that”.
What happens when there is an election? Most of the international trips are backfilled by them because they are not in an election and the argument is that there have to be Canadians present and off they go.
We do it. I do not begrudge them going off and representing Canada. We all do it. What I begrudge is that they come back and nobody holds them accountable. Nobody asks why they were there, whom they talked to, what they did, what they did not do, what they did not say, why they did something. Nobody asks them. That is the part that I do not understand.
My colleague also asked what good they have done. I am going to assume we cannot use senators' names, the same as we cannot use members' names. I do not want to risk it or give offence. I will check the rules later. There is a certain senator from Newfoundland who likes to use the argument that we need the Senate because the House makes mistakes and it catches them. Quelle surprise, we make mistakes. We have 10 provinces and 3 territories and they make mistakes, too. They fix them.
I can remember one time during the Mike Harris years in Ontario when he rushed a bill through and it took six follow-up amendment bills to correct the original mistakes. The amendments were done so quickly that other amendments had to be introduced to fix the amendments that were brought in to fix the original bill. There were six amendments. It sounds funny and silly, but my point is that is what the Harris government did. It worked. It did not need a Senate. It had the rules and could fix its own problems.
My last point is this. There are individual senators who do a phenomenal job for Canada and for the issues that Canadians care about. My only gripe is that I wish they would enter into the public arena so they would have legitimacy behind their actions. It would give a voice to those actions so when they stood up, it actually meant something. First of all, they would be standing up, which would be new, and second, it would mean something, which would also be new.