Mr. Speaker, I agree with my friend across the way on a couple of points. This is an opportunity for the Prime Minister. I was at the Calgary convention observing on behalf of New Democrats, and I thought there was an opportunity for the Prime Minister to come clean in the safest room he is going to have between now and the next election, I would offer, and he chose not to. He just said the same things he says here week after week, but in an angrier, louder tone. That was his choice.
My friend talked about trust. It must be concerning to my Conservative friends, particularly the Prime Minister. They have had many failed strategies on this, but the strategy was to say that no one is going to believe Mike Duffy, so let us put up the Prime Minister's reputation against Mike Duffy's on this story and clearly Canadians will fall on the Prime Minister's side. It must be so unnerving for Conservatives to see polling and reaction of Canadians saying they trust neither of them very much. They seem to trust Mike Duffy a little bit more. That hurts. That has to sting when a Prime Minister has built his whole persona around credibility and trust.
To my Liberal friend across the way, I am confused. We have asked questions about trying to make the Senate less partisan and not allow it to use taxpayer money to raise funds for the parties. That is the issue, and we have talked about getting rid of the Senate in the first place. The Prime Minister's shortcuts around democracy, breaking his promise 59 times to Canadians that he would not appoint senators, is part of this issue. This is the root of it. We cannot simply clip at the branches and say we have fixed the Senate because we got rid of Mike Duffy, Pam Wallin and Patrick Brazeau. That is not the case. We have to go for the root and branch. We have to absolutely take out the heart of this thing.
The only answer the Liberals have for Canadians right now, unfortunately, the only problem they see with the Senate is that they have to appoint more Liberal senators; that will fix things. That is not true.
In looking at the news today, I see Mac Harb, one of the Liberals' favourites, who did what with the privileges he had as a senator? Clearly, the position that the Liberal leader has taken consistently is that somehow tweaking around the edges and not having to actually reform or abolish the Senate—we believe in abolishment—is going to be enough and that this nightmare will not just return again once the spotlight turns down a bit.
It is not tenable. It is not a tenable argument. It is not logical. It does not make any sense. If Liberals believe in this motion that the Prime Minister has to come clean on all these things and that there are serious fundamental flaws in the Senate, then why not agree when we propose motions to get at those same fundamental flaws in the Senate? Why have it one way and then try to have it another?