Mr. Speaker, in one of my last conversations with Jack Layton, he expressed outrage that the first priority of this majority government was to appoint the defeated candidates of the 2011 election to the Senate. In particular, we were talking about the candidate for Lac-Saint-Louis from the Conservative Party.
Michael Fortier had the decency to quit when he lost his election in 2008. He resigned his Senate seat and never returned.
I keep hearing from the other side of the chamber that abolishing the Senate cannot be done. In the words of Jack Layton, “Don't let them tell you it can't be done”.
Would an NDP government, in 2015, work with the provinces not only on abolishing the Senate but also on energy strategy, on developing a job strategy and on developing a policy framework for skilled trades and a training strategy in this nation, among many other things?