Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in the debate and give the Bloc Québécois’s opinion on Bill C-7, the Senate Reform Act.
No one in the House will be surprised to hear that the Bloc Québécois is of the opinion that we can do without the Senate and that we should just abolish it.
The Senate is an archaic institution. I heard members of other parties describe it as such earlier. I know that, in the House, we cannot denigrate the other chamber. However, I do not think that it is a form of denigration to say that, today, in a democracy, it is completely useless to spend so much money and have 105 senators who simply redo the work that was already done by legitimately elected people. That is the big difference. In fact, the House of Commons, with its 308 members, makes decisions and passes all sorts of legislation while following the procedure that should normally be followed here, which involves first, second and third readings. That being said, with the current Conservative government, this procedure is not being followed at all because the Conservatives are imposing time allocations for almost every bill.
In the beginning, the Senate, whether it was at the federal or provincial level, was put in place to protect certain territories. However, over time, the Senate became a place where the Prime Minister appointed friends to ensure a majority. That is what the current Prime Minister promised not to do but, when he had a minority government, he saw that he could change things by appointing Conservatives to the Senate to have a majority there. He broke his promises. He made a series of very quick appointments so that the Senate would have a Conservative majority. The Senate has thus become a very partisan place. I do not say this to insult the senators. Some are doing the best they can and are doing their work honestly.
I think that almost everyone, at least in Quebec, agrees that we could easily do without the Senate since the House of Commons operates in a completely democratic way with 308 people who, for the most part, campaigned and were elected democratically by the public, which is not the case for senators.
Of course, Bill C-7 seeks to ensure that senators are elected. However, in my opinion, the Conservative government is trying to do indirectly what it cannot do directly. It wanted an elected Senate and it made this an election promise. In fact, this goes back to long before the current Conservatives. At the time of the Reform Party, they also wanted an elected Senate. However, they realized that constitutional changes and consultations with the provinces would be necessary to achieve that goal. So they decided to resort to this process and basically tell the provinces they could hold elections and the federal government would then decide whether or not to accept the results of those elections. This is completely ridiculous.
I believe the government introduced Bill C-7 thinking it could avoid consulting with the provinces. Personally, I think that is the major problem with this bill.
So we are witnessing a Senate reform and also a House of Commons reform, since there is also Bill C-20 dealing with representation in the House of Commons. These two bills will weaken Quebec's position within federal political institutions. We know that, with Bill C-20, the government wants to diminish the political weight of Quebec in the House. As for the Senate, we know that Quebec does not agree with the government's way of doing things, but the government wants to have its way nevertheless.
The Bloc Québécois feels that the job of senator is increasingly becoming a reward given by the Prime Minister to political friends. The Senate as an institution is less and less useful to democracy. We are saying that the Senate should be abolished. As members will see later on in my speech, I have a survey which shows that Quebeckers fully support abolishing the Senate.
I remind the House that Quebec's long-standing position is that any change to the Senate must be made with the agreement of Quebec and the provinces. Quebec is not the only one to hold this view since the government began trying to introduce a bill to reform the Senate.
We can go all the way back to the late 1970s. The Supreme Court of Canada looked at the power of Parliament to unilaterally change the constitutional provisions dealing with the Senate. In its decision, the court ruled that decisions regarding major changes affecting the fundamental nature of the Senate cannot be taken unilaterally.
That could not be more clear. The House does not always agree with the decisions of the Supreme Court, but we must abide by them. With this ruling, the Supreme Court spoke loud and clear:
Changes to the powers of the Senate, the method of selecting senators, the number of senators to which a province is entitled, or the residency requirement of senators can be made only [in consultation with Quebec and the provinces].
That could not be more clear. In 2007, Benoît Pelletier, a former Quebec minister of intergovernmental affairs, a renowned teacher and constitutional expert respected by all Quebeckers, both federalists and sovereignists, reiterated Quebec's traditional position by stating that the Government of Quebec believes that this institution does not fall exclusively under federal jurisdiction. In a press release dated November 7, 2007, which I will table in a moment, this former minister said:
Given that the Senate is a crucial part of the Canadian federal compromise, it is clear to us that under the Constitution Act, 1982, and the regional veto act, the Senate can be neither reformed nor abolished without Quebec's consent.
He said it a number of times, on television and elsewhere. Benoît Pelletier has credibility in this matter. The same day he made that statement, Quebec's National Assembly unanimously passed the following motion:
That the National Assembly of Québec reaffirm to the Federal Government and to the Parliament of Canada that no modification to the Canadian Senate may be carried out without the consent of the Government of Québec and the National Assembly.
Much earlier, the same position was taken by Robert Bourassa as well as Gil Rémillard, a constitutional expert who was a minister and my professor, although that is nothing to brag about. In any case, he certainly had a great deal of credibility.
In 1989, Robert Bourassa said that he did not want to discuss Senate reform before the Meech Lake accord was ratified. In 1982, Gil Rémillard said that the signing by Quebec of an agreement involving Senate reform would depend on the results of negotiations on the concept of a distinct society, the division of powers and the federal spending power.
Regardless of their party, all elected representatives in Quebec agree that the federal government should not make any changes without the permission of the provinces, and of Quebec in particular, in the examples I just gave.
In 2007, Quebec's Liberal government took part in the Special Committee on Senate Reform. In its brief it stated:
The Government of Quebec is not opposed to modernizing the Senate. But if the aim is to alter the essential features of that institution, the only avenue is the initiation of a coordinated federal-provincial constitutional process that fully associates the constitutional players, one of them being Quebec, in the exercise of constituent authority.
The Government of Quebec, with the unanimous support of the National Assembly, therefore requested the withdrawal and/or suspension of various bills that were introduced by the Conservative government over the course of previous sessions, including Bill C-43, which had to do with elected senators. It also requested the suspension of proceedings on Bill S-4—which became Bill C-19, then Bill C-10—which had to do with term limits, so long as the federal government was planning to unilaterally transform the nature and role of the Senate.
Bill C-7 raises the same problem and it clearly shows that the government wants to act unilaterally.
I would like to quote a poll on the Senate conducted by Leger Marketing in 2010. It said, “The majority of Quebeckers think that the Senate has no worth in its current form and even more Quebeckers are in favour of abolishing the Senate.”
I encourage all members of the House to consider the opinion of the Government of Quebec, of the other provinces and of Quebeckers in this poll, to truly understand that the government cannot act unilaterally here.