Mr. Speaker, if I am correct, my research has told me that some four provinces of this country had senates at one time and abolished them. I think if we went to the citizens of those provinces, they would tell us they have absolutely no memory whatsoever of there being a senate nor any loss in terms of the political governance of those provinces. Clearly, there are many examples where this can happen.
What I want to focus my question on has to do with the concept of equality. When the Reform Party began, it spoke of triple E Senate reform, which was elected, effective and equal. I hear the Conservatives talk a lot about electing senators and trying to make the Senate effective, but the issue of equality seems to have dropped off the radar. I come from British Columbia, which has 6 senators and 4.5 million citizens. Prince Edward Island has 140,000 citizens and 4 senators.
I ask my hon. colleague what he thinks about an institution that not only has no democratic legitimacy but also enshrines a very lopsided and unequal distribution of political weight in this country.