moved:
That, in the opinion of this House, urgent steps must be taken to improve accountability in the Senate, and, therefore, this House call for the introduction of immediate measures to end Senators' partisan activities, including participation in Caucus meetings, and to limit Senators' travel allowances to those activities clearly and directly related to parliamentary business.
Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.
I rise today to present to this House our practical suggestions for making the Senate more accountable to Canadians.
When the Prime Minister and the Conservatives were elected, they promised to reform the Senate. They also promised to clean up the appointments process. Now, seven years later, the only thing that has been done in that regard is that the Prime Minister has appointed 59 senators.
The Liberals and the Conservatives claim that the Senate is essential to our parliamentary system because, in their opinion, the Senate is the chamber of sober second thought and it gives the regions a voice.
In reality, the Senate is a haven for Liberal and Conservative Party organizers, contributors and fundraisers and, most of the time, these individuals act in the interest of their political party. Canadians have had enough and are fed up with the unelected and unaccountable Senate, which is always under investigation.
More and more Canadians agree with the NDP that the Senate should be abolished. Abolishing the Senate has been part of the NDP's broader vision of democratic reform for a long time. This idea is still a key component of our agenda, and more and more Canadians agree with us.
In the meantime, while we work toward abolishing the Senate, the Conservatives and the Liberals must take measures to correct their mistakes because the status quo is no longer good enough. The NDP is standing up for Canadians by moving this motion and proposing practical measures to make the Senate more accountable to Canadians.
There is no acceptable reason for unelected individuals to use taxpayers' money and Senate resources for partisan purposes. The Liberals and the Conservatives are defending the Senate, claiming that it is the chamber of sober second thought.
If that is the case, senators, as appointed rather than elected officials, should drop their partisan talking points and examine legislation in an impartial, non-partisan way. Like judges and other public servants who are also paid by taxpayers, they have a very specific job to do. They should start doing that job in an impartial and non-partisan manner.
Allow me, now, to share with members some very perceptive observations of a century ago, recorded literally half a century ago in Robert Mackay's classic book, The Unreformed Senate of Canada.
The quotation from 1913, published in the The National Review in London, is from a certain gentleman named Professor Stephen Leacock, who stated:
Liberals and Conservatives combined, we made our Senate, not a superior council of the nation, but a refuge of place-hunting politicians and a reward for partisan adherence.
Mr. Mackay, in his book, goes on to say:
Such statements, though rhetorical, are on the whole still true.
He is speaking in 1963.
Appointment of party supporters is an all but unbroken tradition. During his nineteen years of office Sir John Macdonald appointed only one Liberal and one Independent; Sir Wilfrid Laurier appointed none but Liberals...
Mr. MacKay then went on to draw attention to a debate in the House of Commons in 1906, where the prime minister at the time, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, was asked the following question:
Does the right hon. gentleman...say that under our present constitution he feels he must select appointees of his own party when choosing them.
That was the question asked of the prime minister, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier responded:
...if I have to select between a Tory and a Liberal, I feel I can serve the country better by appointing a Liberal than a Conservative...
Nothing better conveys the connection between prime ministerial prerogative, patronage, and the undue hyper-partisanship of the chamber we call the Senate.
I end by citing where Mr. MacKay says:
Senatorships have often been granted as pensions to the “deserving poor” among party supporters in the House of Commons and provincial legislatures, or as honours to editors of the faithful press, party organizers, or to contributors to the “war chest.”
What has changed? My colleagues today will lay out how too many current Conservative and Liberal senators fit this tradition all too well. I will not go into those details, but one figure perhaps tells all. In the government's own factum before the Supreme Court in the reference on the question of Senate reform and abolition, the government itself tells us that 95% of the appointments to the Senate since the Senate began have been of persons of the same party as the appointing Prime Minister. Nothing has changed from those quotations from 1913 and 1963.
Canadians would be interested to know about the Senate administrative rules of 2004, which are not online and are not available for Canadians to see unless they go to a special effort to ask for a copy to be sent to them. In chapter 1, clause 3, various principles of parliamentary life are set out:
The following principles of parliamentary life apply in the administration of the Senate:..
(b) partisan activities are an inherent and essential part of the parliamentary functions of a Senator;
How so? I cannot wait to hear today from the members of the other parties how partisanship aids in fulfilling the supposed purposes of the Senate let alone how it is an inherent and essential function. The Senate has not bothered to remove this provision, even though last year it did amend some of the administrative rules on travel. In the principles:
a Senator is entitled to receive financial resources and administrative services to carry out the Senator's parliamentary functions...
Also:
a Senator is entitled to have full discretion over and control of the work performed on the Senator's behalf...in carrying out the [Senator's] parliamentary functions...
The whole question of parliamentary functions continues throughout the rules. Basically, a senator is prohibited from using his or her offices and other resources for anything but parliamentary functions, but the definition and the approach to parliamentary functions throughout the document, and what we know through the long-standing practice of the Senate, is to include almost everything but the kitchen sink. The rules go into some detail to exclude certain things as expenses that can be recovered. For example:
No Senator shall request the copying or printing of material by the Senate that...is partisan because it is on a party letterhead or includes a party logo....
It continues:
A Senator may not charge the following expenses to the Senator's office budget:
(a) payments to partisan organizations;
Wow.
Another provision under travel says that one cannot actually use Senate money to campaign during an outside election.
These specifications are clear in what they exclude. They exclude from partisanship almost nothing. Parliamentary functions of the Senate include almost everything.
I would end there by making one final comment. It is not a lot better, in fact it is no better at all, if senators travel around the country as propagandists for the sitting government. If they go around the country showing up on behalf of the government on the Senate dime, not on the government dime, it is not so different from the way the government is using advertising through government dollars to convey a partisan message. There is so much more I could say, but I will leave it to my hon. colleagues, who will no doubt say it much better than I.