Mr. Speaker, the consultation process or, as my colleague calls it, elections, will absolutely have a positive impact, because right now the current system is that the senators who are appointed are really accountable to no one, except perhaps the person who appointed them, whereas if there were consultations conducted on a provincial level, senators would be accountable to the people who elected them or at least suggested that they be appointed to the Senate.
In other words, if we have a senator who is appointed by the Prime Minister for partisan reasons, that person is really only accountable to and answerable to, in many respects, the Prime Minister, because that is how the person got the appointment. It was because the Prime Minister suggested that appointment to the Governor General, who made the ultimate appointment.
However, if provinces suggest to the Prime Minister that an individual should be appointed to the Senate and the Prime Minister follows through with that in his advice to the Governor General, ultimately it is the people of the province who made that selection and to whom the senator will be accountable. That is the beauty of this approach. A senator would be accountable to the people of his or her region and province rather than to the Prime Minister, and that is an important distinction.