Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to speak to one of my favourite subjects.
I would like to acknowledge that I will be sharing my time with the member for Hull—Aylmer.
I will focus my remarks a bit differently than some members, simply because, to me, a lot of these scandals that are happening right now with respect to expenses and where people live is really a symptom of the problem and not the real issue. I am glad that Canadians are focused on it because it is a real part of the problem. However, it is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is the direction we are going in, whether it is status quo or moving to an elected Senate.
We should recognize that right now Canadians think the Senate sits and does not do any real harm; how much good it does is questionable, so why would we upset the apple cart? What we need to remember is that under the current system every appointed senator's vote carries more weight than those of us who are elected. That is by virtue of the fact that bills have to pass in both houses. There are fewer seats in the other house; therefore each vote carries more weight in our parliamentary system. This is not some add-on or little accessory to our parliamentary system; this is a key focal point.
Fellow Canadians must keep in mind that these scandals involve the people who make the laws and that there is no accountability. At the end of this Parliament, those of us who want to be re-elected have to go to the Canadian people and be accountable for the decisions we made and the things we did or did not do. That house does not report to the bosses, who are Canadians. That is the focal point of what we are talking about.
In my view it is critical to understand that we do not have the luxury of the traditional Canadian way of approaching things. We like Goldilocks solutions. Some issues are a little too hot, some are a little too cold, and we like the soft spot or the warm spot in the middle. That is the Canadian way. We look for compromises and ways for people to get along.
The problem in this case is that what looks like a Goldilocks solution is as dangerous as the status quo. I would argue that it is even more dangerous. The status quo or abolishing means that the middle is not voting. That is not the Goldilocks solution. I am shocked that there is any member of the west in the House who is willing to elect the Senate, give senators even more power and let them utilize all of the constitutional authority they have. If I ever ran for an open seat in the Senate and got elected as a senator, I would certainly exercise every bit of the mandate that I have been given, just as I do now as a member of Parliament.
In 1980, the Supreme Court of Canada stated this with respect to electing our Senate:
The substitution of a system of election for a system of appointment would involve a radical change in the nature of one of the component parts of Parliament.
The Supreme Court of Canada stated that to elect members to the Senate is a radical change. That means that radical change would entrench the following: British Columbia, with over 4.5 million people, would get six seats in the Senate; Alberta, with 3.8 million people, would get six seats; Manitoba, with 1.2 million people, would get six seats; Saskatchewan, with just barely over a million people, would get six seats; Newfoundland, with a population of 512,000 people, would get six seats; and, just to round it out, P.E.I., with a 150,000 people, would get four seats.
Why on earth would any member of the government, in particular those from the west, support electing the Senate to entrench that power, when the numbers are so unfair? If I were from B.C., I would begin every speech about the Senate with how unfair it is that there are not enough seats in my province to reflect our population and that it is unfair, undemocratic and needs to be improved.
In fact, I was just at the procedure and House affairs committee an hour ago, and the whole exercise around redoing the boundary commission reports is all about the number of people per riding. It is an important gauge of our democracy,yet here we are with a Senate that is extremely skewed against the west, and the government members seem to be willing to entrench that, exacerbate it and make that unfairness go on forever.
I just want to say to my friends in western Canada that as a proud Ontarian, I will stand up every chance I get for their right to proper representation, even if some of their own members will not.
I have a couple of last things.
Some of the good work and the good deeds the Senate does are often pointed out. It is possible to point to very good studies that help all of us, but the issue is whether the people who authored those reports should also be given the right to vote on laws.
That is the point. It is not whether they do good reports or not, or whether they do good deeds; it is a question of whether or not they should be entitled to pass judgment and vote on our laws, particularly when their vote has more strength than our vote. Is that really the way we want a modern democracy to operate?
If we need good deeds done, we have lots of good citizens we can call on to be on a royal commission or a blue-ribbon task force or a stand-alone commission. There are lots of people willing to do that. It will cost us some money, but it will be a lot less than the $100 million a year the Senate costs. Most importantly, we will not be bestowing upon them the right to vote on our laws. In a democracy, they should not be able to vote on laws unless they are accountable.
By the way, the government's current proposal to elect the Senate means that by law they cannot be accountable. They would run in an election on a platform of “Here is what I will do; I promise to do this, that and the other.” Then, if they were elected members of Parliament, they would come here and spend a few years, and at the end of the Parliament they would go back to Canadians and say “Here is what I promised. How did I do? Are you going to give me the right to go back, yes or no?”
Under the current government proposal, they can make any promise they want. They would serve a nine-year term and then be prohibited by law from running again. How are they supposed to be accountable? It gives no accountability, and that is what democracy is about. That is why this proposal does not work.
On this whole notion that the Senate is a chamber of sober second thought, spare me. First of all, structurally they have whips. Why is there a need for a whip if everybody is independent? Why is there a need, if there are no caucus positions? Why is there a need for a whip if everybody is supposed to give everything sober second thought?
They have a whip because it is a caucus system in all but name. There are a few senators who are truly independent, but most go to the weekly caucus meetings, and they do not rotate through the three caucuses. They go to their home caucus, the Liberal caucus or the Conservative caucus. They say, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir.” to the Prime Minister at the end of that caucus meeting, just like very other member, and they march into the Senate and do what their partisan politics dictate that they need to do.
Mr. Speaker, you are indicating my time has concluded, and I can only hope that the time for the Senate is equally concluded soon. It is the best thing we could do for this country, and the sooner we get rid of the Senate, the stronger our democracy will be.