Debates of June 5th, 2013

Concurrence in Vote 1—The Senate

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I take umbrage with what my colleague is saying. Clearly, his revisionist sense of history is not being genuine with this chamber.

The Conservative Party of Canada was founded upon two political parties, the Reform Party of Canada and the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. In that particular election, I think the cumulative effect of those two numbers was far greater than two.

[The Deputy Speaker]

That was not a point of order. It is a point for debate, perhaps challenging some of the analysis of the member for Winnipeg Centre.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on the same point of order—

[The Deputy Speaker]

It is not a point of order. We will resume debate with the member for Winnipeg Centre.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it was the Progressive Conservative Party that was defeated, from 202 seats down to 2. It was the worst defeat in Canadian history.

However, their caucus remained at roughly 50 people, because they had all these senators. I said to myself, “Self, it would not have hurt if we had a dozen or so senators in the other chamber to help us live through those dark years when we were reduced to nine seats”.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

I'll give you some.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, again, we are getting some cheeky lip from behind me. You might want to call them to order at some point during my remarks. If you do not, I will.

I had an open mind when in 2006, the Prime Minister introduced their first Senate reform amendments. I actually attended the Senate with him. We were wearing the same tie that day, and I remember it quite well.

I was interested to see if Senate reform was possible. We had done our research. We knew that 28 times since 1972, significant attempts had been made to constitutionally amend the Senate, all of which failed.

For me, that same Prime Minister, who I actually had some confidence might take a shot at the Senate, let us down so profoundly that he was responsible for my joining the prevailing attitude of the party to which I belong.

The turning point for me was twofold.

First, the Prime Minister, in a petulant huff, decided that if he could not beat them, he would join them. As I said earlier, he became the most profligate serial offender in Canadian history in terms of stacking the Senate with his party hacks and flaks and bagmen and failed candidates. He appointed the president of the Conservative Party. He appointed the chief campaign manager of the Conservative Party. He appointed the communications director of the Conservative Party. He appointed the senior bagman of the Conservative Party. The whole Conservative war room was now fully staffed and funded by the Canadian taxpayer with not only their salary, but with their four employees and with their travel privileges, doing full-time partisan work out of the Senate.

That offended the sensibilities of anybody who considered themselves a democrat. It should rattle the very foundations of confidence in our democratic institutions. There has been no more profligate abuse of the Senate. The whole war room was now chocked full.

He was not finished there. The Prime Minister has appointed some 50 senators. He was thumbing his nose. We now have full-time party fundraisers criss-crossing the country on the taxpayers' dime, engaged in purely partisan political activity. If there was any justification for a Senate, that was forgotten long ago.

The Liberals are no better. Both the chair and the co-chair of their national campaign happen to be senators. I will not name them. The Conservative that ran the entire Manitoba provincial election was a sitting senator. His salary should go against the spending limits of those other members of Parliament running.

Let us face it, the Duffy affair was only the tip of the iceberg. That is what really drew the public's attention. That was the catalyst that helped us focus down on what was really wrong here. This $90,000 soft landing was not really about making him whole, because of the money he had to shell out. It was to keep his mouth shut for the extent of the political interference by senators in election campaigns, which was widespread throughout the country.

While I am on that point, if people here really believe that Nigel Wright dug into his own pocket and gave $90,000 of his after-tax earnings to Mike Duffy, they are nuttier than a porta-potty at a peanut farm. Anybody with any common sense would know that that money will come from the Conservative fund of which Nigel Wright was a director for seven years and Senator Irv Gerstein is the other director.

That was it for me. I was absolutely fed up with this notion. I believe it is fitting and appropriate and maybe even poetic justice that the Prime Minister's monumental hypocrisy associated with the Senate is the one thing that has finally come to bite him in the what rhymes with gas.

This is the first thing that turned me off the Senate forever.

The second thing, though, was the direct political interference by the unelected, undemocratic Senate with the work and activity of the elected chamber where we as an elected House of Commons and representative of people passed the only piece of climate change legislation in the 39th, 40th or the 41st Parliament.

It was two years of negotiating and pushing by the former leader of the NDP, Jack Layton, that finally got this bill through, that finally got the approval of all the parties in the House of Commons. It wound up in the Senate, and without a single hour of debate or a single witness heard at committee, senators vetoed it and killed that bill. Now Canada, to its great shame, has no national climate change policy whatsoever.

Even worse, just to add insult to injury, and what compounds the offence, in my view, is that the other bill the senators unilaterally and arbitrarily vetoed was the HIV-AIDS drugs for Africa bill. That was a real classy choice. They had no right to unilaterally and arbitrarily block and interfere with the will of the democratically elected members of the House of Commons. No one elected them to make legislation. No one gave them a mandate or the legitimacy to undermine democracy and act as stooges for the PMO. The Senate is not a chamber of any kind of thought, never mind sober thought.

In the same vein, more and more pieces of legislation are originating in the Senate. As I say, I this is my sixth term. I have seen a lot of legislation come and go. It used to be a very rare thing when a bill would come to the House of Commons labelled S-10, S-11, S-12, S-13. Now the Senate is cranking them out like there is no tomorrow. Half the legislation we deal with originates in the other chamber. The stuff we get to deal with is lumped together in an omnibus bill, 60 or 70 pieces of legislation all packed into one, on which we get a few hours of debate and a few witnesses at committee. The substantive material is all being generated in the Senate. Again, no one elected senators to make legislation. No one gave them the authority or mandate to make legislation. It offends the sensibilities of any person who considers him or herself a democrat.

When senators are not cranking out bills, they are gadding about the world like a bunch of globe-trotting quasi-diplomats. They have never seen a junket they did not like. They are always chock full of senators. We cannot afford that. We are broke. In case people forget, this is $58 million we have to borrow to shovel over there another wheelbarrow full of money. The Black Rod is going to knock on the door and ask for his dough pretty soon, and these guys will dutifully trudge down there and deliver to keep their political machine bankrolled and funded, like an unfair competitive advantage, by the Canadian taxpayer. Can people not see what is wrong with that? It is enough to drive a person crazy.

One thing that really bugs me about the senators is that they are allowed to sit on boards of directors. The Senate of Canada is one big institutionalized conflict of interest. Let us look at one example. Senator Trevor Eyton, a Conservative senator, is CEO and president of one of the largest corporations in Canada, Brascan, which has been renamed Brookfield Asset Management. It happens to own Royal LePage. By some happy coincidence, it keeps winning the relocation contract for the military and the RCMP. It is a multi-billion dollar contract.

The Auditor General looked at it and said that the bid had been rigged to give the contract to Royal LePage. It was offensive to everyone's sensibilities. Then the court looked at and said that the bid had been rigged and awarded $40 million in damages to the low bidder that should have won it, Envoy. Then, by some happy coincidence again, for a third time, in 2009, the cabinet got directly involved and made sure that Royal LePage, the very company this guy was CEO of and for which he continued to be the chairman of the board of directors into his Senate tenure, made sure that his company—let us face it; he has stock options in that company—got the same contract again. That should offend one's sensibilities.

If there were no other reason to deny it any money, it is that inherent conflict of interest that comes from what I call an institutionalized conflict that is the Senate of Canada.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my friend's remarks with a mixture of amusement and serious concern about the content of his remarks and the purpose of his motion.

Like many members, I was in this House on March 7 when the member for Winnipeg Centre rose in this House on a question of privilege in relation to laws, bills or motions before this House potentially being unconstitutional. It offended his privilege, yet we are debating a motion brought by the same member today that is clearly unconstitutional and ultra vires.

Leaving aside the personal slights and slagging the member has done here, I would like him to reflect on his question of privilege from March 7 and ask if his motion today is not violating the very privilege he raised on March 7.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I know that my colleague for Durham is new here, but I challenge him to find what is unconstitutional about moving a motion to have vote 1 pulled from the main estimates to be debated and voted on separately. That is all my motion aspires to do. It is to have a separate vote on the money allocated for the Senate of Canada, the $58 million. I think he is the one who should maybe re-read what is constitutional and what is not.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I like the member for Winnipeg Centre. He is chair of our committee. I would say that we are friends, but we do not necessarily agree on everything. I would characterize his motion and the NDP motion of today as nothing less than idiotic, and that is being generous—

[The Deputy Speaker]

This is now the fourth time. It is the third time I have been up and the fourth time someone in this chair has been up. We are trying to control the language within this House, and the use of the term “idiotic” is simply not acceptable when one is describing legislation. I would ask all members, including the current member who is on his feet, to please temper their language.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize, but I want to be clear. I was not referring to the member with that adjective but rather to his motion. Shall we say, “foolish”, or “not a good motion”?

I wonder if the member understands that according to Canada's Constitution, every bill, including supply bills, in order to become law, must be passed by both Houses of Parliament. If the Senate no longer exists, these laws cannot be passed, which would mean that, as of April 1 of next year, the federal government would shut down. There would be no more civil servants, and similarly, since the CRA collects the taxes for most provinces, many of the provinces would have to shut down. Is this a sensible idea?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I think my colleague came in late and maybe does not realize the content of my motion, which is that we vote against and do not approve the $58 million of the voted appropriation. There is statutory funding for the Senate that we have no control over, and it will flow no matter how we go about tonight's motion.

However, the member should consider the efficacy of the Senate. I have a lot of respect for my colleague as well. However, does he really think it is right to have this taxpayer-supported, partisan political machine over there, which is now running roughshod over his group too, because they are in the minority, and which is controlled by the PMO?

In whose interest is it to give this unfair competitive advantage to those two parties with their 50 or 60 salaried political fundraisers gallivanting around the country? Really, when we reflect on the matter, that is what is ridiculous and idiotic, in my view.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has mentioned a couple of bills that have been in the Senate that were not passed but were passed in the House of Commons.

Bill C-290, a single sports betting bill, was passed in the House of Commons unanimously on Friday. A number of members on the Conservative side chose not to speak to the bill or stand up against it, but when the bill went to the Senate, they actually tried to undermine it. Now we have a situation where organized crime and offshore betting sources will have support against a bill that would balance the system.

I would like my hon. member's opinion on the fact that we have a bill that was passed in the House of Commons, with no objection, because no member stood up and voted against it, but it still has not passed the Senate.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am sympathetic to the situation my colleague is in, but he has to understand that the Senate has become an extension of the PMO. It operates under a shroud of darkness, essentially. Nobody really pays any attention to what goes on over there. That is where meritorious bills from the opposition go to die. That is why they send them there, and that is where they abuse them and misuse them.

I am the first to admit that there is room for and maybe even a benefit to some sort of consideration by some kind of council of elders. Douglas Cuthand is an aboriginal writer and leader who wrote a very thoughtful piece in the Calgary newspaper suggesting that we might want to model ourselves on the way aboriginal people view their elders. A Mohawk leader named Rarihokwats wrote a very thoughtful consideration that perhaps the Companions of the Order of Canada might be a suitable list where we might start looking for a council of elders to give advice and counsel on policy issues if we feel it is needed.

There is nothing the Senate has ever done that could not be done as well or better by others. There is nothing magical about the reports senators give or the policy investigations they write.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Winnipeg Centre for his comments. I have a certain level of respect for him. He is a very capable committee chair on the government operations committee.

Whether or not this motion is constitutional, it is a backdoor way of getting constitutional change. We starve an institution of funds, we basically abolish the institution.

My question for the member is about the nature of bicameralism. Big countries in the world, especially federations, whether it is the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Australia, India or Brazil, all have two Houses of Parliament. The only countries that do not are small countries. Federations, especially, have two Houses in their parliaments. The only big countries in the world that do not have second Houses are China and Iran.

Is the member suggesting that Canada should become more like China or Iran and have just a single House in Parliament?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the love of my life, Jenni, is from New Zealand. I think that is a sensible little country, which does, in fact, have a unicameral system.

The Province of Manitoba abolished its Senate in 1876, and others were not far behind: Nova Scotia in 1928; Quebec in 1968. Never mind having a Senate for the sake of having a Senate. What is it hoping to achieve?

The idea of regional representation has kind of been put to bed as more powers have gone to the provinces. Capable, competent provincial legislatures now very capably and competently represent the interests of their regions. We do not need this vestigial organ, as the leader of my party calls it. It is an expensive nuisance, and certainly, since it has been compromised and misused and abused to such a great extent, it is an impediment to democracy and does not enhance democracy.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the hon. member for Winnipeg. He mentioned Nova Scotia.The Premier of Nova Scotia is NDP, and I am sure that the Premier of Nova Scotia will not agree with the motion put forward tonight. Nova Scotians will want to look at it, assess it and ensure that there is equal representation right across the country, especially for the small province of Nova Scotia.

Why have the member and his leader not talked to some of the NDP premiers about what they think about the Senate?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, Premier Darrell Dexter favours Senate abolition and spoke to the matter just recently. The Province of Manitoba favours abolition. The Premier of B.C. favours abolition. The Premier of Saskatchewan favours abolition. The former Liberal premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty, clearly came out in favour of abolition. I could go on. There are actually quite a few premiers who favour abolition, including both majority NDP governments in the country.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak again on this motion, which is similar to the motion on which I spoke earlier today.

I have several points. My main point is that it does not make any sense, because it would close down the Government of Canada and many provincial governments. In Canada's Constitution, there is a provision that laws of Canada have to be passed by both Houses of Parliament. That means that we could not vote on supply bills, on which we will be voting later tonight, that provide the money for the coming year if the Senate did not approve them.

If all of the Senate's money were taken away, the Senate would not be able to approve this legislation. As of April 1 next year, the Government of Canada would be deprived of money. It would not be deprived of statutory programs, but money for the entire public service. We would have no CRA, for example, because nobody could be employed there. What does the CRA do? It collects the taxes not only at the federal level, but for all of the provinces as well, except for Quebec. It collects income tax, corporate income tax and HST for those provinces that have it. Not only would the federal government run out of money as of April 1, nine provinces would have a huge chunk of their revenues taken away by this action.

As a result, the whole Government of Canada would grind to a halt. We must think of that. Do we want to find out what is going on through CBC? CBC gets huge subsidies, so it would not be able to continue. We would not have food inspection. We would not have all of the things that Canadians rely on. We would not even have employment insurance, OAS or things of that nature. While those monies would be protected, because they are statutory, the people to administer them would all be gone because there would be no civil service left.

If foreigners wanted to help Canada in this government-less state, they could not go to our embassies abroad because we would not have any embassies. All of the lights would be turned out in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

I am not sure the NDP has thought through how government really works. The NDP is not a party that favours zero government. If anything, the NDP is the party of big government, yet the effect of its proposal would be to eliminate government.

For these reasons, I think this is not a good message. It is not a good idea to do something that would eliminate the federal government and many of the provincial governments.

For those reasons alone, we are certainly not going to support this crazy idea.

There are other things that I would like to mention as well. I think that this is disrespectful to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is in the process of considering a long overdue reference by the federal government. We have been recommending such a reference for a year or more and the government did it just recently, thereby wasting a lot of time. Had it done it a year ago, the Supreme Court probably would have decided by now and we could proceed. It is highly disrespectful of the Supreme Court.

We have to obey our Constitution. The law says that the Senate and the House of Commons have to approve. It is not just a federal law, it is a constitutional law. It would require at least seven provinces and the federal government to change it. We have to wait before we proceed in a meaningful way to hear what the Supreme Court of Canada says.

This is also highly disrespectful towards the provinces. At least seven of the provinces, ten in certain cases, have to give approval for constitutional changes in the Senate. For the NDP to simply present a motion to starve the Senate of its funds and think that will do it does not respect provincial rights. The Senate is supposed to be a body that represents provincial interests and the provinces are central to the determination of the makeup and rules governing the Senate.

It really does not make sense to have a motion that disrespects the Supreme Court and the provinces.

The third problem is that this motion benefits the government because it is a debate about the Senate and the government does not mind that. The government quite likes that. The government has no problems with that. What the government does not want to do is to debate the role of the Prime Minister and the role of the Prime Minister's Office in the transfer of the $90,000 by Nigel Wright to Senator Duffy. A motion that dealt with that, like calling for documents on this transfer of funds, would have been much more interesting from an opposition party's point of view than a harmless debate about the Senate. A debate about the Senate right now is not really useful before we hear from the Supreme Court as to what we are allowed to do. We will not hear from the Supreme Court for some time.

Lastly, it has been erroneously stated that Liberals are for the status quo in the Senate. That is not at all true. I would like to describe what our democratic critic, the former leader of the Liberal Party, the hon. member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, thinks about Senate reform.

First of all, we have to recognize that the distribution of Senate seats is highly unbalanced. Alberta and British Columbia have six seats each. New Brunswick has 10, so the original provinces, the Maritimes, and Quebec and Ontario hugely benefit in the distribution of seats compared with Alberta and British Columbia. If we move to an elected Senate, that means that the Senate would become more powerful. It might become as powerful as the House of Commons. If that were to happen, it would be hugely unfair to British Columbia and Alberta, so I do not know what the Prime Minister is trying to do with his proposed elected senators, without any return to the Constitution and without talking about the distribution of Senate seats. The Prime Minister comes from Alberta. He would be disadvantaging his own province whose proportion in the Senate is far less than its proportion of the population of Canada.

My colleague said that the first thing one would have to do to move toward an elected Senate would be to have a negotiation involving the distribution of Senate seats to make it fairer and more in line with today's population. If one could achieve that, then one could move constitutionally toward an elected Senate. He also said we would have to have some division of interests, so that the Senate and the House of Commons would be complementary in their activities rather than being a recipe for deadlock between the two. We see in the United States and perhaps in Italy that the House of Representatives and the Senate cannot agree and there is a deadlock. We want to avoid that.

It is a complicated business. That is one approach that could be taken, which my colleague thinks is a good idea and which I think might be a good idea, but we should not underestimate the difficulty of that approach as we know from our own history. It is at least a principled approach to Senate reform, as opposed to this proposal that we have today of starving it of funds, which is a recipe not only for shutting down the Senate, but for shutting down the whole Government of Canada and the governments of many provinces as well.

In closing, my main argument is that this approach by the NDP does not make sense because the NDP is a party that favours government. It does not make sense to eliminate the government if you are in favour of government, but their proposal would do exactly that: eliminate the federal government and many of the provincial governments.

This does not jibe with the Constitution or the Supreme Court. It is absolutely not the right approach.

What it does show is that the NDP is certainly not ready for government. I would think the most principled action by the more sensible members of Parliament for the NDP would be to vote against their own crazy motion.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot of inflammatory language about our motion. I think we are upsetting the status quo. That is sometimes why we are here, to upset the status quo.

Members opposite have not thought through everything. There is no reason why we cannot stop funding the Senate, take the Senate staff, and we are not talking about the partisan staff, and put them with the rest of the public servants. Then any other bill that came forward that had a constitutional nature because of the ramifications of not funding the Senate, could be dealt with at that time.

What we are saying is that we should have a debate on whether or not it is actually appropriate at this time to fund the Senate at a cost of $92.5 million when senators and the Senate itself are not even capable of ensuring the basic respect needed for taxpayers.

I would hope that the hon. member, who actually sits on the same committee as me, would be as worried about taxpayers' money and the abuse of it as I am.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am afraid my hon. colleague confuses two things. We could have a good, wholesome debate about whether or not the Senate should be abolished, whether it is worth the $90 million, whether Canadians get good value out of it, whether it should be abolished or whether it should be reformed, et cetera.

What we cannot do is simply cut off the funding and expect this federal government to continue with business as usual. As I have explained in two speeches in one day, the effect of doing that would be to cut all the civil servants out and to cut out all the operating expenditures of the government. There would be no lights on in this room or in the other chamber down the hall. Nothing would happen. All of the Senate staff would be fired. The government could not get things through the Senate. The only statutory expenditure, which the member for Winnipeg Centre mentioned, for the Senate, is the salaries of senators.

Is the NDP suggesting that the Senate should have nothing to do, but the senators should continue to be paid? Is that their idea?

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Minister of State (Western Economic Diversification)]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday our leader did say, after being questioned by that member's leader, that he left the Senate vacancies unfilled. In that period when he was trying to get those filled by elected people, the Liberal Party and other parties got together and tried to fill those Senate vacancies with their own people.

The member speaking tonight, talking about what he does know about the Constitution and how important the Senate is, could probably validate how hypocritical the NDP members have been on this issue, because they did want to fill the Senate. He would know. He was here at the time when his own leader was trying to cut a deal with the Bloc Québécois and the NDP to fill those vacancies with their own. At that time they certainly had no qualms about the Senate. In fact, they already had all their positions filled.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think the NDP members are probably very happy with what I have said today. I would say in response that the Conservative record is not the greatest either, because the Prime Minister went for many months without appointing a single senator because he wanted senators to be elected. He found he could not do that, and all of a sudden he appointed a huge whack of senators, 18, including Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and so on.

He found that he could not function as a government without an effective Senate. If that silly NDP motion passed, we would find that out in spades. Both actions by the government and the proposed actions by the NDP say that under our existing Constitution, we do need the Senate to function in a workable way.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened to comments from both sides of the House. Members will not be surprised to hear that the Bloc Québécois will vote in favour of the motion to stop funding the Senate. I would even suggest that members of the House be able to sit in the Senate while the House of Commons is being renovated. That would help us save money.

The one thing we do know for sure is that the public needs to hear the truth. When the NDP talks about abolishing the Senate, it is careful not to mention that this would require opening up the Constitution. The Conservatives and the Liberals are against abolishing the Senate, an archaic institution that serves no purpose and is undemocratic, because they appointed their friends to this institution. They at least admit that we would have to open up the Constitution.

I do not want to speak on behalf of the Government of Quebec, but I can say that if the federal government ever chooses the excellent solution of cutting funding to the Senate and then abolishing it, we will have all kinds of things to ask the federal government for and all kinds of things to patriate.

Could my Liberal colleague explain why he thinks the NDP chooses not to mention that we would have to open up the Constitution?