Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her excellent work on this file.
We have to expose the lie that has been repeated again and again in this House that the senators are somehow there to represent their regions. Where would the provinces be if they did not have the Conservative and Liberal senators from the Maritimes, who are saying zippo about the EI attack? Where would the people of Saskatchewan have been when the Province of Saskatchewan was fighting for equalization payments? Where would they be without those Conservative senators who said nothing on that?
It is a lie. The senators represent their party interests. They always have. That is why they are fundamentally undemocratic and have to be held to account. They are appointed by the Prime Minister, and they act as sock puppets for the party. They act as an extension of the Conservative war machine. They use the resources the Canadian taxpayers pay them and then use them for the fundraising and political army of the Conservative Party while misrepresenting themselves to the Canadian people as somehow representing the regions of this country.
One cannot show any real examples of their having done this, and it is unacceptable that taxpayers are paying for the partisan work of their bagmen, their campaign organizers and their planners.