Mr. Speaker, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to stand in support of the motion today:
That, in the opinion of the House, the government of Canada, in consultation with the provinces and territories, should take immediate steps towards abolishing the unelected and unaccountable Senate of Canada.
I want to start by talking about the original formation of the Senate. There is a phrase that the older we get, the better we were, and that applies to the Senate. There is a lot of romanticism about what the chamber is today and what it was intended to be, but there are different schools of thought on that.
My reading in law school and as a student in the political science department at the University of Alberta some time ago left me with a distinct impression of some of the less attractive aspects of the Senate when it was envisioned by the founders of this country.
First of all, the Senate was envisioned as a bastion of protection for the propertied and elite classes of this country. The propertied classes had a fear of the majoritarian democratic view at that time. At that time, of course, the concept of having directly elected legislatures, where the people of a country or a state would directly elect their legislators, was new and there was great fear of that direction, particularly by the classes that represented the nobility or the monied classes.
That is why in our Constitution, to this date, we have a requirement that a senator must own $4,000 worth of property in order to even sit in the Senate. Right off the bat, that disenfranchises millions of Canadians in this country, who by their own Constitution cannot take a seat in the Senate, because they do not own a piece of property. In addition, there was a fear of majoritarian rule and democracy. There were people who wanted to sit in the Senate and keep watch over what democratically elected officials would do in the House of Commons chamber.
Let us burst through some of that romanticism and recognize that the chamber has a very ignoble beginning, not one of sober second thought or of lofty ideals, but one of a fear of democracy, entrenchment of propertied classes and rejection of the idea of majoritarian rule in this country.
I want to move to sober second thought, because I have heard a lot of comment on that today. Any concept that the Senate chamber stands today as the chamber of sober second thought was burst two years ago when the House of Commons passed the climate change bill by democratic vote, and then it went over to the Senate, where the senators who are unelected and unaccountable to Canadians voted against that bill without any real substantive debate. There was no sober second thought on that bill.
It is an affront to democracy that a bunch of fundraisers and failed candidates, who do not have any mandate from the Canadian people to pass judgment on legislation, ended up overriding the democratically elected decision of the people in this chamber who do have a mandate from the Canadian public. Not only was it undemocratic, but my main point is that there was no deliberation done whatsoever. It was orders from the PMO that went into the Senate, and its members killed that bill for political reasons. So let us disabuse ourselves of any notion that the chamber stands as any kind of chamber of sober second thought in this country.
I want to talk about democracy. I heard my Liberal colleagues say the economy is on people's minds, and asking why we are wasting time talking about the Senate. With respect, I think Canadians are concerned about their democracy. I think Canadians are concerned about the institutions of government in their country. To make that a second-rate concern of Canadians and to try to make a hierarchy is unbecoming. We are a democracy in this country, and Canadians are proud that we live in a democratic structure. Whenever any parliamentarian or any Canadian wants to talk about improving the democracy in this country, that is an issue of first order of importance to the New Democrats, not second order of importance as it is to the Liberals, which is maybe why the Liberals never did anything to reform the Senate in their time in office.
I want to talk about the concept of electing senators, because there has been some talk about that. We have a problem with the Canadian structure if we actually have two chambers in this country that each claim democratic legitimacy, because it was not set up that way.
The Senate was set up with certain powers. On paper, it has the power to stop legislation, but senators have always recognized that because they have no democratic legitimacy, they do not have the ability to stop legislation that comes from the House of Commons. On rare occasions in the history of Canada, the Senate has overridden legislation, as we saw on the climate change bill or the abortion legislation at some point. However, generally, at least senators have recognized that they have no right to override legislation in this House.
If we elect senators and they feel they do have a mandate, what happens if we have a New Democrat or Liberal controlled House and a Conservative controlled Senate? What happens if we have gridlock, because that is exactly what we would have?
We are not like the United States, where it has a carefully crafted system with an executive branch of government that can often override the problems of having a stalemate. However, the United States and other countries do have such stalemates. Therefore, keeping a Senate and electing senators would lead to further gridlock in this country.
In terms of election, I keep hearing the Conservatives, in particular, say that senators do not represent provinces; they represent regions. They are saying that the Senate is about regional representation and not provincial representation. Of course, they are saying that because one of the problems with the representation in the Senate is that it is unequal. I have pointed out several times today that British Columbia, with 40 times the population of Prince Edward Island, has six senators and P.E.I. has four. Therefore, we have provincial imbalance. That is why the Conservatives then switched and said that it is not about provincial representation, but regional representation.
If that is the case, why are the Conservatives pledging provincial elections? Why are they not regional elections? How can a person be elected to represent the region of the west, but only be elected in Alberta? That disenfranchises the rest of the people in the so-called region that they are claiming those people represent. It shows the absolute hollowness and lack of thought that is going into some of the comments being made today by the Conservative side of this House. It has nothing to do with regional representation. It has nothing to do with provincial representation. It has to do with an unelected chamber that has no democratic legitimacy to anybody making decisions in government, and it has no place in a modern democracy in 2013.
I also want to talk a little about hope.
Any country should be able to look at its Constitution and improve it. A Constitution is a living, breathing document. The United States has amended its Constitution some 20 times. Yet in Canada, we have not amended our Constitution once since we repatriated it in 1980. In fact, the repatriation of our Constitution and the establishment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was a sign that we can, as a country, make progressive democratic changes to our nation.
We in the New Democrats think we can do that. We believe we can think big. We can think of possibilities to improve our democracy. Yes, most likely it would require a constitutional amendment of some type, but all constitutional changes would require that. Even the changes the Conservatives are proposing would require a constitutional amendment. If we talk about electing the Senate or changing in some way its powers, we are going to have to talk about amending our Constitution. For my part, I believe that Canadians are ready to do that. We can look at our Constitution and update it just as the Americans have and many other people have as well.
I want to talk a little more about cost.
I have heard that the Senate costs $90 million a year. Actually, it is much more than that. The $90 million is the amount in the estimates for the actual running of the Senate. However, if we add in travel bills and staffing costs, it is actually more than $150 million a year. I would say that today, when we are talking about one-eighth of a billion dollars, Canadians would rather see that money spent on many other things than on partisan appointed senators who do not have constituencies, who do not have any accountability to the people of Canada, yet have the ability on paper to make legislation.
I believe that all members of this House want to improve democracy. I think we are all well intentioned, but we may have different paths on how we get there. However, it is important that we do not shy away from discussing fundamental issues of democracy and ways we can improve it.
We see people in Syria today who are fighting for responsible government. All over the world people are doing that. Surely we can have a mature discussion in our country about ways to improve our democracy and make it more accountable to Canadians. We can start by abolishing a structure, like four provinces have done, without any diminution or ability to govern, including Quebec and Ontario, when those institutions are not democratically chosen by the people of our country.