Mr. Speaker, perhaps my friend was not here when the former leader of the New Democrats and I moved a motion to ban partisan fundraising by senators of all parties and to institute a cooling-off period for appointments of party insiders and failed candidates. In fact, I am reading from that motion, which the member did not realize had been debated in the House. We voted on it.
While New Democrats were making reasonable proposals, what did the Conservatives do? Conservatives only made Senate reform suggestions that would never pass. They have been spending time doing nothing all these years, because their goal, ultimately, is to play political games rather than bring greater accountability to the Senate. They claimed to want an elected Senate, then appointed senators in record numbers. They said they wanted to clean up the Senate, then refused to beef up the Senate ethics code. They said that taxpayers should not subsidize political parties, then had taxpayer-funded senators working on fundraising for the party.
I could go on, but we certainly have debated that motion, and we have had many proposals in the House in the past.