Mr. Speaker, I would like to identify the part of the NDP motion that the Liberal caucus supports and the parts that we find are wrong and that we cannot support.
The motion reads, “That, in the opinion of this House, urgent steps must be taken to improve accountability in the Senate” and we agree, but we should add “in the Senate and in the House”. It goes on to say, “and, therefore, this House call for the introduction of immediate measures to end Senators' partisan activities, including participation in Caucus meetings”. Well, that is ridiculous. It is certainly against the Constitution. It continues, “and to limit Senators' travel allowances to those activities clearly and directly related to parliamentary business”. Can we also ask the same of the members of Parliament?
The Liberal Party agrees with the first part of the motion “to improve accountability in the Senate”, but also in the House. We believe Canadians want to see improved accountability in both the Senate and the House of Commons, which is why we have taken the lead on making that happen.
As of today, Liberal senators and MPs are the only ones who have begun to proactively disclose the details of their travel and hospitality expenses online for Canadians to see. In fact, Liberal senators are now far more accountable for their spending than NDP MPs, who continue to hide how they spend taxpayer dollars from their constituents.
Today what Canadians are wondering is why the NDP members will not disclose their expenses. Is it that they have something to hide, or maybe it is in their political culture to be accountable for others but not for themselves?
Why would those members not unanimously support the four measures our Liberal leader proposed publicly some months ago: hospitality expenses made by MPs and senators and their staff be disclosed; introduce legislation to make meetings of the Board of Internal Economy of the House of Commons open and transparent to the public; create a quarterly and more detailed online expense report for spending by members of Parliament and the Senate that is also more easily accessed and usable by the public from the home page of the Parliament of Canada website; and the House and Senate Boards of Internal Economy should work with the Auditor General to develop mandatory performance audits of the House of Commons and Senate administration every three years.
Is that agreed, unanimously? Certainly, I am sure my colleagues will applaud that, if they want to be as accountable themselves as they want the Senate to be.
The second part of this motion cannot be supported by the Liberals, “to end Senators' partisan activities, including participation in Caucus meetings”. That would certainly be against the Constitution.
I want to explain this to my NDP colleague who is so surprised. We have no right to say today that there are two kinds of parliamentarians, some with some powers and prerogatives and others without powers and prerogatives when it is not written in the Constitution of Canada. It is as simple as that.
We cannot say “You are a parliamentarian, but not the same as the ones in the House. You cannot be part of your caucus”. This would change the character of the Senate, its relationship with the House and it would be a constitutional problem.
It is very amateurish on the part of our NDP colleagues to be constantly introducing motions in the House that make no sense and waste time. It really is a basic thing to know that one house cannot restrict the powers and prerogatives of another house.
That is why we cannot support it. I think I have made my point clear.
Another example of the NDP amateurism in all these issues is that in June 2013 we had a debate of the opposition day motion that called for the complete defunding of the Senate. I doubt MPs are asking for that. The Liberals opposed this motion on the grounds that a defunded Senate could not achieve its constitutional mandate. Can we agree about that?
The New Democrats are falling into the trap that the Prime Minister has set. They are making it a constitutional issue rather than an issue about the Prime Minister's judgment in his appointments, and it distracts from scandal and cover-up in the PMO on the Wright–Duffy affair.
Yesterday, we learned that Mike Duffy was told to take the $90,000, keep his mouth shut and go along with the cover-up, or Conservative senators would kick him out of the Senate. On June 5, the Prime Minister said in the House:
...it was Mr. Wright who made the decision to take his personal funds and give those to Mr. Duffy.... [It was] not communicated to me or to members of my office.
That is what he said.
Now he saying that it was his best knowledge at the time. What a change. A lot of questions come from that. The Prime Minister, shamefully, does not want to answer to Canadians. That is completely unacceptable. Who told him that at that time? If somebody told him that only Mr. Wright was aware of the $90,000 cheque, who told him that? The Prime Minister should give names and should explain why these people misled him, if that is the case. If it is not he who misled Canadians, he should explain himself. The fact that he is not explaining himself is completely a scandal and an attack against our democracy.
The fact is that my Conservative colleagues accept that, day after day, the Prime Minister stands up and, instead of answering specific questions, deflects all the questions. They should be very impressed that this is the Prime Minister of Canada behaving this way. Let me say that as a minister I always answered questions in this House. The opposition may not have always been pleased by my answers, but as a matter of respect, if they asked me questions on something, I gave an answer. Most of these ministers do the same as the Prime Minister. When we come with a specific question on anything, most of them are pleased to read their notes and they give an answer that has nothing to do with the question. When they do not answer questions from the opposition, it is not only this House that they are not respecting; it is the people of Canada.
To get back to my NDP colleagues, they are not at their best when they talk about the Senate. First, there is this entire matter of abolishing the Senate because some senators misappropriated their budgets. Senator Duffy seems to have scoffed at the basic rules of respect for taxpayers.
It is absolutely staggering that the NDP is proposing to reopen the Constitution on that basis, because that is what we would be obliged to do. This party would be obliged to tell Canadians that the economy is doing very poorly, that the government has so mismanaged the economy that it has become anemic, but that that is not its priority. Its priority is to ask the Prime Minister of Canada, the premiers of the provinces, the House of Commons and all the provincial legislative assemblies to undertake a huge constitutional negotiation for the purpose of abolishing the Senate.
The Supreme Court will very likely tell us that that will require all or at least seven provinces with 50% of the population, but that is a relatively minor difference because, unless the NDP members rise and say they are prepared to abolish the veto on constitutional change that this House granted Quebec, 7/50 and unanimity are more or less equivalent.
The NDP members have never explained themselves on that point. Perhaps they should do so since they want to talk about the Constitution at all costs instead of talking about the Prime Minister’s accountability.
If Quebec’s veto on constitutional change is a joke to them, then 7/50 is equivalent to unanimity among the provinces. That is their fate and that is the debate we would have.
Obviously, one province will say it wants certain things if we abolish the Senate. We would embark on an enormous negotiation that would no doubt turn out badly and would be a huge waste of time. That is the NDP’s irresponsibility.
As for the Conservatives, their irresponsibility on this issue lies in their wish to elect the Senate without changing anything else in the Constitution of Canada, as though the provinces had nothing to say on the matter and a Senate elected without any mechanism for resolving conflict with the House of Commons would not lead to the same repeated paralysis we see in the United States. The Prime Minister of Canada wants to import many things from the United States, including parliamentary paralysis. The whistle has to be blown on that.
Furthermore, if the Senate were elected, the Prime Minister would focus on his own province and British Columbia, since those two provinces are highly under-represented in the Senate. Since the Senate is not elected but plays a useful role, which, most of the time, consists in leaving the last word to the House of Commons, the problem of the under-representation of Alberta and British Columbia is controllable.
However, if the Senate were elected, all its members would have only one idea in mind: to get themselves re-elected and to serve out their terms, and the under-representation of British Columbia and Alberta would be utterly intolerable. We do not know which province would volunteer to give them more senators.
Would it be the Atlantic provinces? That is highly unlikely; their weight in the House of Commons is steadily declining. Would it be Quebec? No, Quebec is a nation. We can forget about that. Ontario is quite under-represented in the Senate and the House of Commons, so that is highly unlikely. Manitoba, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories have no senators to give away.
Consequently, we would find ourselves in an enormous constitutional crisis with the ill-considered plan of an irresponsible Prime Minister who still refuses to conduct himself in a transparent manner with Canadians.
The Liberal Party of Canada is the only party with a comprehensive plan to make Parliament more accountable and transparent, and publicly disclosing our expenses is just the first step.
With the return of Parliament, Canadians can count on the Liberal Party and its leader to continue pushing for measures to prevent ethical breaches, increase openness and transparency and strengthen the integrity of our electoral system and our great democracy.