Mr. Speaker, this is the problem, and we have seen this since the beginning of Confederation. The party in power uses the Senate to stack people with patronage appointments in that place.
It does not actually function as a chamber of sober second thought. It functions as a parking place for party bagmen, partisan campaigners and the like. We saw that after the 1984 election when Brian Mulroney took power. He used the Senate in exactly the way for which he has denounced the previous Trudeau administration. We see that with the current Prime Minister using it in the same way that the Chrétien administration used it.
This has to come to an end. We have to get rid of the other place. This is a good first step, talking and having a debate about whether we should be giving these millions of dollars to it.