Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this House today to debate Bill C-7, An Act respecting the selection of senators and amending the Constitution Act, 1867 in respect of Senate term limits.
The Senate was established in 1867 under an agreement between federal and provincial authorities.That agreement covered a number of aspects that still define the Senate as we know it today. At the outset, the Senate of Canada, like the British House of Lords, was an institution that was to provide sober second thought to any ill-informed decisions that legislators in the House of Commons might make. But Canada has changed a great deal, and in the past 100 years, there have been 13 attempts at Senate reform. Unfortunately, all have failed.
Under Bill C-7, now before the House of Commons, the terms of members of the upper house would be limited to nine years. The bill also contains a framework under which elections for the Senate could be held in the provinces. Those elections would provide a list of candidates from which the Prime Minister could make appointments to the Senate. Perhaps this is Senate reform, but it is not democratic reform that this government is offering, especially since the Prime Minister will still be able to choose senators himself, as he sees fit.
In fact, the bill proposes that senators be elected by a complex and ill-conceived system of elections. The elections will have no democratic value, because holding them is optional. In the provinces, the elections will probably favour candidates from the large urban centres at the expense of the regions. Bill C-7 also invites provinces to conduct elections at their own expense and under their own rules. Do we not find it strange that elections for the Senate, a federal institution, will be set up by the provinces?
Furthermore, the bill is not at all well regarded by the provinces, especially Quebec. Premier Jean Charest has already indicated that he is willing to contest it in court. Ontario, British Columbia and Nova Scotia go so far as to directly suggest abolishing the upper house.
Wanting to have the upper house made up of elected representatives also does away with the main difference between senators and members of Parliament. If senators are elected, they too will have political responsibilities to their constituents. So the one aspect that sets the Senate apart from the House of Commons, its independence, will be lost. Elected senators will be useless additions to elected members of Parliament.
The NDP is also opposed to this Senate reform because, within the next generation of senators, it would create a complicated system with half the senators being appointed and the other half being elected. The Senate, which is already discredited, would become even less functional, if not completely non-functional. There would be a division between a new category of senators elected for a nine-year term and the former category of senators appointed until age 75. The elected senators would have to follow the same party lines as the members.
We must not fool ourselves. It would be difficult to be elected to the Senate without the active support of a political party. The Senate will therefore be even more politicized than it currently is. A senator elected provincially could say that his mandate is stronger than that of a member because he would have more voters and a longer term.
This reform that the Conservative government is proposing could also lead to the same kind of legislative deadlocks that we are seeing in the United States, where Congress is composed of two elected bodies—the Senate and the House of Representatives. The situation could even be worse than in the United States, because our Constitution does not include a mechanism for conflict resolution that would make it possible to resolve the differences that are very likely to arise between the two elected chambers.
These days, the only reason for keeping the Senate is to provide lawmakers with the intellectual support of an assembly of outstanding people with various backgrounds who would have a non-partisan look at bills introduced in the House of Commons. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The Senate has never really played its role as a chamber of sober second thought. Although some senators take their role seriously, the Senate is filled mainly with party cronies and has largely served as a comfortable retirement home for former politicians where many vote blindly along party lines.
Canadians increasingly think that the Senate should purely and simply be abolished. A little over a third think that the House of Commons should be the only federal legislative entity. Angus Reid has released a new poll on what Canadians think of the Senate. This is the fourth poll on this topic that this company has done since February 2010.
Poll after poll, one idea seems to be growing in the minds of Canadians: abolishing the upper chamber. Based on the latest poll, 36% of respondents agree with the statement that Canada does not need a Senate. All legislation should be studied and passed by the House of Commons. This percentage has been constantly going up since February 2010. Meanwhile, the statement that Canada needs a Senate and that Canadians should be allowed to participate in selecting senators is less popular than before. Support has gone down to 40% from 44% last November and 50% in July 2010.
The Angus Reid poll shows that the rejection of the status quo has been a constant. Only 5% of Canadians would be happy with the current rules governing the Senate, and 71% of Canadians would support a national referendum on the topic. So there you go. That is the NDP's position exactly.
Clearly, Canadians want a referendum to determine the Senate's future. And they are not alone. Senator Murray, who has held his position for 32 years, says that the Senate reform put forward by this government is a fiasco. In his view, this will lead to a real debate on the issue.
That is why the NDP thinks that Canadians must be asked whether they need a Senate, and if so, what type of Senate. If Canadians could have the right to vote on the best way to allocate $100 million in public spending, it is very likely that the majority of taxpayers would opt for something other than funding the Senate.
The Senate has lost its credibility in the eyes of many Canadians. Many of them are wondering what is the advantage of keeping an institution that is too often a country club for government members.
Those who doubt senators' loyalty towards their parties would only have to read the letter of Conservative Senator Bert Brown to be convinced:
Every Senator in this caucus needs to decide where their loyalty should be and must be. The answer is simple; our loyalty is to the man who brought us here...
The Conservative government, just like the Liberal government before it, takes pleasure in appointing senators based on their political affiliation. Despite repeated criticism of the appointment process in the past, this government, right after the May 2 election, sent three failed candidates, including Josée Verner, to the Senate, when it already had the majority in that chamber. This type of attitude is what has led Canadians to call the Prime Minister a hypocrite on the issue. Actually, an Angus Reid poll showed that 57% of respondents think Stephen Harper is a hypocrite in the way he handles Senate appointments.