Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to be able to address this motion from the NDP and to be able to follow my colleague from Beauséjour. He is always a tough act to follow, and I expect you are aware that his tongue was planted firmly in his cheek as he was praising what he may expect in remarks from me. Nonetheless, I welcome the opportunity to speak to the motion before the House. I will be opposing the motion.
The Senate is an important and essential component of our constitutional and political life. The motion put forth by the NDP to abolish the Senate is a simplistic and knee-jerk response to the current and questionable behaviour of some senators. If lack of decency, lack of integrity, half-answers, half-truths and a general disregard for democracy are grounds for abolishing the upper chamber, then there would be ample grounds for Canadians to call for the abolition of the House of Commons.
Our democracy is in decline, but not because of the Senate. Rather, its decline can be traced to a Conservative government that believes the entirety of our democratic legitimacy occurs during an election. To the Conservatives, once an election is held, there is no more need for democratic engagement. That is why we see them shutting down voices in the public sphere and in civil society. That is why we see a complete evisceration of facts and evidence from their decision-making through gutting science and Statistics Canada. That is why we see women's organizations and other civic voices that disagree with the Conservatives having their funding cut or being told to toe the line.
If there is concern about the political health of the country, it is not the Senate that should be the focus of the NDP but the reform of this place, the House of Commons. Day in and day out we see scripted questions and scripted answers. Day in and day out we hear empty words and hyped-up rage and rhetoric, disingenuously calling it debate. It is not debate. Debate implies that we listen to one another. Debate implies that we are genuinely open to different options and new ideas. It implies as well that the health of our democracy cannot be sustained when we as MPs simply sit here like trained seals and do what we are told. We need fundamental change on how MPs operate.
We do need real reform, and it should start here in this chamber, but today we are chasing headlines again by debating a motion introduced by the NDP, a motion to abolish the Senate. The motion shows a lack of appreciation of our history, and that to me is troubling. I am privileged to be a member of Parliament and further honoured that I represent the riding of Charlottetown, the birthplace of Confederation.
This debate is meaningful to me because the construction and building of our federation was not an accident. The creation of the Senate was not an accident. It was a deliberate and thoughtful decision made by our founding fathers, as the Senate was meant to be a counterbalance to the House of Commons.
Again historical context is important. Representatives of the Maritime colonies at the time, including Prince Edward Island, were rightly concerned that the concentration of political power and decision-making would be centred in what was then Upper Canada. Even the distinguished Quebec representatives from Lower Canada at the time understood the need for a counterbalance against the power centre of Ontario, then Upper Canada.
That is why it is shocking that today we have Quebec MPs who would in any way wish to reduce the power and influence of Quebec. This would in fact occur if the NDP had its way and the Senate was abolished.
The principle of representation by population, rep by pop, was to apply to the election of members of the House of Commons. Under this principle, the people of Upper Canada would naturally have received the greatest number of seats in the House of Commons. That is where the population centres existed. For the people in the Maritimes who embraced responsible government, though, the idea of a second chamber based on regional representation was fundamental to the Confederation agreement.
Again, it was, and is, fundamental to counterbalance the power of the House of Commons and the concentration of power in what is now Ontario.
The Province of Prince Edward Island has as its coat of arms a large red oak tree and, beside it, three small saplings. Under the coat of arms, in Latin, are the words parva sub ingenti, which means “the small under the protection of the great”. That has been the motto of Prince Edward Island since 1769.
The Senate is there to ensure that the small are protected by the great. Provinces like mine need a strong federation. We need that representative regional voice that is part of the Senate. We need that to avoid being trampled. We need it to avoid the tyranny of the majority.
My province is small but proud, and we have some very serious challenges. The government is quite happy to kick us to the curb.
In my province, we have a chance to diversify our economy. We had that chance through the announcement that was made in 2005 by the Liberal government of the day to construct a third subsea cable that would ensure electricity would come from the mainland. That is the key to energy security, to economic opportunities going forward. That project was cancelled by the Conservative government.
Right now we are going through a very vigorous debate. The gutting of the EI system and the impact it will have on the seasonal economy that we have in Prince Edward Island are topics on the lips of everyone in my province.
Back in the last budget, when the Conservative government decided it was going to cut back the civil service, the rate of cuts across the country was 4.8%, but not in Prince Edward Island. In Prince Edward Island it was double that, so where we do have good-paying jobs, they are being cut at twice the rate they are in the rest of the country.
We are the only province without a passport office. In every province in this country, if veterans want to see their case manager, they can go to a case manager in their province, but not in mine. If immigrants want to talk to a live person about their case, they can talk to somebody in their province, but not in Prince Edward Island. If taxpayers want to talk to a live person about their income tax return, they can talk to a live person in any province in Canada, but not in mine.
There has been a lot of talk in this chamber about a certain senator, Mike Duffy. I can tell members that the appointment of Mike Duffy in Prince Edward Island was a huge insult. As far as we are concerned, out of the four seats that were set aside for Prince Edward Island, one has been given to Ontario. Every time he opens his mouth, that embarrassment is further exacerbated.
The real issue in this debate should be the quality of the appointments, not the Senate as an institution. When we see the Prime Minister appointing Senators Brazeau, Duffy and Wallin, we should rightly question his judgment. We certainly must not, as the NDP is proposing, rush out with simplistic and ill-conceived policies that would undermine the protection of Quebec and the Maritimes as well as their constitutional and historical links to the Senate.
The NDP's approach to democratic reform looks a lot like the Conservatives' approach to justice: when the only tool they have in their tool kit is a sledgehammer, everything starts to look like a rock.
As the member of Parliament for Charlottetown, I say to the NDP that the current government has done enough to undermine Prince Edward Island's status as a province. Please stop helping them.