My apologies, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Braley made donations to the Conservative Party and to the Prime Minister, among others, totalling $86,500, prior to his appointment. I would like to thank the government members for allowing me the opportunity to repeat that fact, and to repeat it in a clearer way. That is the qualification for Senator Braley's appointment to the Senate.
Some members, especially Liberal members, seem confused as to why we would dare to suggest that, with the gravy train the Liberals rode for so long and that the Conservatives, mirroring the Liberals, are currently enjoying, we would want to see the end of that institution. If one's qualification is that one becomes a name on a ballot as a sacrificial lamb in a Toronto Centre by-election in 2008 or has $85,000 to spare, surely we can set the bar higher than that. I think Canadians understand that the bar should be set higher, which is why the motion is so important today. It is why Canadians are so concerned about this.
The Prime Minister and members of the government like to try to slough off the questions on this. They say that they have been clear and have already told everybody the truth. They say that they have already said these things so many times. Why are Canadians bothering them with all these details? It is the details that are important. It is the details that consume Canadians' lives. It is the price of food. It is the price of rent. It is the cost of gas. It is the cost of a Metropass in Toronto. These are the details of people's lives that people are consumed with and concerned about. These are the kinds of things the government should be concerned about.
We asked months ago why the government was letting companies charge seniors an extra $2 just to get their bills in the mail. At the time, the Minister of Finance went on about a self-regulating code of conduct, as if that is some kind of comfort to seniors who are barely scraping by in expensive cities right across the country.
We want to see a government that is focused on the real needs of Canadians, on the ways that will help them live in cities that are very expensive. That includes young people who are today graduating from university. In my province of Ontario, the average student debt at the end of a four-year undergrad is $37,000. Then they are going out into a job market where they cannot find permanent jobs. Their options are serial short-term contracts, part-time work, and increasingly, unpaid internships. Now there are some excellent internship programs out there that are run well, with proper oversight, but currently, young workers are simply asked to work for free in jobs that were once entry level positions.
We have not seen the government budge on that issue. We have not seen any action on this issue from the government, but it has spent a lot of time on spin and has congratulated and rewarded its supporters handsomely.
Donald Plett, Conservative Party president, is in the Senate too. These are the same senators who, after the House passed Jack Layton's climate change bill, a historic bill, and one we all would have been proud of, including some members on the government side, killed that bill. We are laggards in the international community when it comes to climate change. We are laggards when it comes to democracy here if we are letting an unelected Senate, filled with folks who bought their way in, failed candidates, and party presidents, both Liberal and Conservative, make those decisions.
Some Liberal members and Conservative members whose close friends sit in the Senate try to make this personal, and they say to the NDP, “So-and-so is a good senator; why are you picking on him?” We are not picking on individual people. We are talking about an institution. We are talking about democracy. We are talking about how we do this. We are talking about how we bring the issues of our constituents into Parliament and how we work on those problems together and come out with solutions that help Canadians.
That is why we are here. That is what we are here for. We are not here to protect parliamentarians. We are not here to protect senators who are taking advantage of the public largesse. We are not here to provide cover for them, but we also do not expect the Prime Minister—who, by the way, ran on a platform of accountability and transparency—to duck and weave and to cut and run. We do not expect that. Canadians do not expect that, especially when we have so many important issues to deal with.
In my riding, right across Toronto and right across the country there are thousands upon thousands of immigrants, for example, who have been waiting years to sponsor their parents and their grandparents. They have been waiting years for that. They need answers to these questions. They come into my office, and no doubt they come into the offices of many of my colleagues, and they are wondering why the government is not processing these applications in a timely fashion. Right now it has put an actual moratorium on applications, and when it lifts the moratorium, it will only be accepting 5,000 new applicants.
This is the kind of thing on which we need to put our focus. We need the Prime Minister to stand up in this House and take the responsibility that this motion underlines he must take. We need him to do that, because we need the government to become focused on the very pressing needs of Canadians from coast to coast to coast.