Mr. Speaker, I will reply to my colleague through you.
The Liberal Party of Canada is included in the 78%. We would support an elected Senate. However, I would like to know what he would do about the problems that would be created if we did not amend our Constitution accordingly. What would happen if we did not establish a hierarchy of the powers of the Senate in relation to those of the House of Commons and if we did not set the number of senators for each province that the provinces could agree to?
Today, with unelected senators, it is not the end of the world if a province is overrepresented, but the day that we have an elected Senate and it exercises its real powers, the overrepresentation of Alberta and British Columbia will be intolerable. For these reasons, as responsible legislators, we must not take the easy road of abolishing the Senate or having an elected Senate without planning for it. We have to work with the provinces to see whether they can agree on the number of senators for each province. It will be very difficult to do, but just because it is difficult does not mean we can pretend that the problem does not exist.