Madam Speaker, Canadians should remind us that we are broke. We borrow money every year just to make payroll, to pay our bills and to keep the Government of Canada running. We are in a severe deficit situation. We should be looking under every rock and turning over every stone to find efficiencies and ways to save money.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent in the other chamber, not to augment, complement and enhance democracy but to sabotage and undermine democracy and to thwart the democratic will of this chamber.
A great deal of the money that we spend in the Senate is to fly senators around the world like a bunch of Harlem Globetrotters. Have members ever seen a parliamentary junket where every Senate position was not filled? We take a pass on most trips that we are offered. Senators never turn down a trip. They gallivant around the world like some high-flying globe-trotting emissary of Canada, which is of no material benefit or value to us. It is a waste of money. It is a waste of hundreds of millions of dollars that could be better spent enhancing our democracy instead of sabotaging it.