Madam Speaker, I enjoyed listening to the speech by my colleague from Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup.
He spoke of the rhetoric in the preamble to the bill that the Conservatives are using to try and mislead people. The term “independent” is used, for example. I had not noticed it when I read the bill. I find it quite ridiculous that this term is used in a bill that refers to the Senate. In fact, it is quite clear that both the Conservatives and the Liberals have appointed party cronies to work in the other chamber and that they are accountable to the Prime Minister. That much is clear and nobody here questions it. Even they would have to agree that senators are accountable to the Prime Minister. Abolishing the Senate, an archaic institution in our 21st-century political system, could obviously change this.
I would like to know whether the member believes the bill would make the partisanship problem in the other chamber worse and that an election—which would inevitably involve political parties—would only aggravate the partisanship in the other house and actually make things worse?