House of Commons Hansard #100 of the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was benefit.

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Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

6:30 p.m.

Conservative

Gary Goodyear Conservative Cambridge, ON

moved:

That Vote 1, in the amount of $57,532,359, under THE SENATE—The Senate—Program expenditures, in the Main Estimates for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2015, be concurred in.

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

6:30 p.m.

Conservative

Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON

Mr. Speaker, I am dealing with an opposed item, the opposed item being the estimates necessary to carry on the business of the Senate. It is the funding for the Senate.

This is an item the New Democratic Party opposes every year. Every year the NDP causes us to have to deal with the issue of whether or not the other place ought to receive any funding. The NDP's argument, as one can see from the debates in previous years on this matter, is to argue that the Senate has no legitimacy. That argument will be summed up with more finesse by one of my hon. colleagues on the New Democratic benches in time, but it goes something like this: the Senate has no place, as an appointed upper House, in a modern federation like Canada. We would be better off with a unicameral Parliament.

I expect NDP members would point to a number of other jurisdictions that have unicameral Parliaments, such as New Zealand or the various provinces, some of which did in fact have legislative councils, upper Houses, of their own in the 19th century. These were abolished in the course of the 19th century in Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Manitoba, and then in the course of the 20th century in Quebec. No other province has one.

That would be the essential argument they are making. The New Democrats would also argue that no change to the way the Senate is structured can make this body better than the situation we would have if we had a unicameral Parliament. That is the essential argument. It is a defensible argument, although I do not share in it myself.

The trouble with this argument today is that we are facing a somewhat different set of ground rules than we were in the past. This argument was presented in the past with the symbolism of saying that the Senate is a morally bankrupt place and therefore we ought not to fund it. We all understand that in the end the funding will go through and the estimates will be approved, but we are making a statement.

That is a statement that no longer has very much moral resonance, and I would urge the New Democrats to perhaps refrain from opposing this item in future years. I will present my argument as to why this should be the case.

What is different from previous years is that this year we have an answer to a series of questions that were posed to the Supreme Court last year regarding different ways of reforming the Senate.

Building on the fact that there was a consensus among Canadians that the Senate ought not to be an appointed body into the future, the government put forward a series of six specific questions to the Supreme Court of Canada, asking about different options for changing the Constitution in order to change the structure of the Senate.

These included a question regarding limits of tenure on senators: instead of being appointed to age 75, could senators be appointed for some limited term of perhaps eight, nine, or ten years? Six years is actually the standard we see in both the United States and Australia, and I would argue it is essentially the gold standard worldwide, but it had not been considered in Canada. We were looking at a longer term.

Limitations on the terms of senators was a question that was asked in several different ways. What amending formula would apply to this kind of limit or that kind of limit on senators? What if it only applied to senators appointed in the future, or only to senators who had been appointed after the current government came to power or who had signed declarations indicating a willingness to step down?

Second, the Supreme Court was asked about consultative elections. What if the federal government were to sponsor consultative elections, meaning a kind of plebiscite among the people of the province as to who ought to be appointed on their behalf to represent them in the Senate?

Third, what about a federally sponsored framework under which provincial governments could enact their own legislation, which would be used for these consultative votes on who should be appointed to the Senate?

Then there was a question that related to the repeal of property qualifications to be appointed to the Senate.

Finally, the Supreme Court was asked about just abolishing the Senate. Could it be done under federal powers?

The Supreme Court responded to all these questions.

To explain what happens next, it is important to remind people that there is more than one amending formula for the Constitution of Canada. In this respect, we are not like the other great federations of the world.

The amendment formula for the U.S.A. is that if three-quarters of Congress and two-thirds of the state legislatures support a resolution to amend the Constitution, then that amendment will take place. The Australian system is that if there is a majority in a referendum in a majority of the states, then there can be a change to the Constitution.

The Swiss also have a consistent referendum system. A majority of cantons must approve it, as well as a national majority. Similarly, Germany is also a federation, as is Austria. They too have systems that have one amending formula.

However, in Canada there are five amending formulae. We have a system under which the federal government can unilaterally amend the Constitution, section 43 of the Constitution. Section 44 says that an amendment can apply to a single province. I am not working this through in the order in which they are stated. Section 38, the so-called general amending formula, says that certain aspects of the Constitution can be amended with the support of seven provinces having 50% of the population of Canada.

Another formula, the unanimity formula laid out in section 41 of the Constitution, says that for certain kinds of amendments, every province must give its consent. When I say “every province”, what I mean is every provincial legislature, so in practice a section 41 amendment has to be supported by all 10 provincial legislatures as well as the Parliament of Canada. For the 7/50 formula, seven provinces with 50% of the population must consent.

It is not always clear which amending formula applies to which aspect of the Constitution. There are a number of areas that are unclear, none more so than the Senate. What the Supreme Court did in its ruling earlier this spring was lay out which of the amending formulas applied.

The Supreme Court's opinion, right or wrong, is binding upon us. It turned out that the Supreme Court said that federally sponsored elections or federally administered elections, which is to say those conducted under provincial legislation that fits into the federal framework or those directly administered by the federal government, cannot be permitted. They are unconstitutional. The Senate cannot be democratized unless there is first a constitutional amendment that is approved by seven provinces and half the population of Canada.

With regard to limitations on the terms of senators, it said that a limitation cannot be placed on a senator and that if a senator has signed a declaration in advance indicating a willingness to step down, that declaration is of no binding force or effect unless there is first an amendment that is approved by seven provinces with half of Canada's population.

With regard to the question of repeal of property qualifications, right now there is a requirement that a person must own $4,000 of real estate, a more significant amount in 1867 than it is today, in the province he or she is representing, or a leasehold to that value. The Supreme Court said that requirement can be abolished, but unilaterally. The federal government can actually pass an amendment in Parliament that will strike down that provision, but not with regard to Quebec.

In Quebec, there is a provision that one must own $4,000 of real estate in the electoral district that a person is representing in the Senate. One of the quirks of the way the Senate is set up is that senators from Quebec represent districts that were outlined in the census of 1861 for the legislative assembly of the United Province of Canada, and those 24 districts were frozen in place at that time and continue to be represented. There are all kinds of oddities involved in this issue. Quebec was geographically smaller than it is today, so northern Quebec is not represented by anybody. The northern two-thirds of Quebec has no representation at all.

The districts bear no resemblance to population patterns in Quebec today. Rural districts have almost no population, vis-à-vis the Island of Montreal, which has dozens of federal ridings but, if I am not mistaken, just two districts. That is an accurate reflection of the population of Quebec in mid-19th century, but not today.

If we wanted to get rid of that and say that people just have to be a resident of Quebec and that they do not have to own real estate in that particular district, we could not initiate that amendment. We could initiate it, but we could not follow through. The Quebec National Assembly must also approve it. We could not do something as simple as that unilaterally.

Finally, the Supreme Court spoke on the issue of the abolition of the Senate. This is the proposal favoured by the New Democrats. What the Supreme Court said was that in order to abolish the Senate, an amendment approved by all ten provincial legislatures and both Houses in the Parliament of Canada is required.

What we are talking about here is zero funding, but taking away the funding for this institution demonstrates nothing anymore. The Senate is unreformed because the Supreme Court has said that we cannot reform it. We really cannot abolish the Senate unless we get the consent of every single provincial legislature.

However, it is more complicated than that. In 1996, in the wake of the Quebec independence referendum that got a “yes” vote 49.3%, if memory serves, the Chrétien government introduced a piece of legislation known colloquially as the regional veto act. I am going to take a moment to read the relevant parts of this very small act. It is “An Act respecting constitutional amendments”, and it was assented to on February 2, 1996. It says:

Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows:... (1) No Minister of the Crown shall propose a motion for a resolution to authorize an amendment to the Constitution of Canada, other than an amendment in respect of which the legislative assembly of a province may exercise a veto under section 41 or 43 of the Constitution Act, 1982 or may express its dissent...unless the amendment has first been consented to by a majority of the provinces that includes (a) Ontario; (b) Quebec; (c) British Columbia; (d) two or more of the Atlantic provinces...[representing] fifty per cent of the population [of that region] (e) two or more of the Prairie provinces that have, according to the then latest general census, combined populations of at least fifty per cent of the population [in the Prairie region]

There we are. We have to have a majority in all of the regions before we can even introduce an amendment. This is significant because it means that we cannot initiate a proposal. A minister of the crown cannot stand up and propose to abolish the Senate or amend the Senate by making it more democratic, limiting terms, or getting rid of property qualifications unless the measure has first been approved by the government of a province. We are no longer able to initiate constitutional amendments under this legislation.

We could try repealing this legislation and then proposing an amendment to the Constitution regarding the Senate. However, right now that ability does not exist. While I understand the sincerity of the New Democratic Party members in their desire to remove the Senate, an institution that they regard as atavistic, the fact is that we are not in a position to make that change.

Ironically, they are in a position to make that change. No minister of the crown may make this change, but the member who proposed the opposition motion, for example, could, if he wished, propose a resolution to this effect. We could then see the start of some process, I guess.

If they are sincere about some kind of change to the Constitution of Canada, it is time for them to start demonstrating it by putting something forward. Alternatively, they have friends in provincial legislatures. If they feel it is something that should be started at a provincial legislature and then carried on through a different legislature to adopt the proposal to change or amend the Constitution regarding the Senate, they could do that.

The point is that the ball is in the NDP's court. It is not enough any more to repeat what I think has unfortunately become a mantra—the mantra being that the Senate should be abolished—and now when anybody suggests anything about legitimizing that body any other way, they kind of stick their fingers in their ears, start saying, “I can't hear you; I can't hear you”, and discussion ends. New Democrats have picked as their alternative, as the one they are so closely aligned with, the single method that is the hardest to achieve. The fact is that all of these methods of changing and democratizing the Senate, making it a more modern institution, have all been blocked by the Supreme Court.

Was the court right in what it did? Was it wrong in what it did? I am not one of those legal positivists who believes that every time the court rules, the court is automatically right because the judges are my betters and know better than I do in all respects. The fact is that they have the final say. Therefore, their word is law and we have to accommodate ourselves to that reality.

The New Democrats have to accommodate themselves to that reality too, and it would seem most inappropriate, indeed, to withhold funding from an institution that we are not constitutionally entitled to change, on the basis that we think that institution is out of sync with modernity. It would be far more appropriate to try to find a way of helping to modernize that institution, and I look forward to any comments they may have as to how they would go about doing that.

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

6:45 p.m.

NDP

Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON

Mr. Speaker, I have listened with fascination to my hon. colleague. He presents a very interesting point.

The point he made, though, that the Senate is unreformed as a result of the Supreme Court ruling, is correct. The question is: Is it unreformable? I am afraid he might have missed the point of the issue of finances tonight. We, in the democratically elected House of Commons, have brought forward numerous mechanisms to ensure accountability to the taxpayers of this country, such as spending limits, limits on flights, accountability, conflict of interest rules, which the Senate decides it is above. It writes its own rules. It worked under the gentleman's code, which we see has resulted in numerous police investigations, and we do not know the end of it.

Regardless of the larger constitutional question we face with the Senate, the fact is that it does not seem to believe it is financially accountable to the Canadian people. Senators give themselves credit cards to travel with, to make purchases and then argue about it later. It has created a culture not just of entitlement but, I would argue, of corruption that does not exist in the House of Commons because we are accountable to the Canadian people.

Would he not agree that how we hold the Senate to financial accountability is a discussion that needs to happen here in the democratically elected House? Would he not agree that, if the Senate is going to continue as this anachronism in the 21st century, there should at least be some comparable measures or standards, even if they are similar to what the elected House has, in terms of conflict of interest rules, spending rules, and justification of spending, it would be an important first step and it is within the mandate of this House?

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

6:50 p.m.

Conservative

Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON

Mr. Speaker, I thought my hon. colleague raised quite a good point. There is the question of the internal reform of that House.

I must say I disagree with one unstated component of his observation, which is that lack of financial transparency and accountability is an inherent feature of an unelected House. The moat-cleaning scandal in the British House of Commons demonstrates quite effectively that elected people can be quite outrageous in their use of taxpayers' funds when there is not proper accounting.

As to the point about the need for better transparency and accounting, I certainly agree that is true. My sense is that the Senate is working in that direction. Of course, it opened itself up to a very thorough audit, which is now going through all senators' expenses. I must say that seeing what is going on there is a good lesson to all of us that we ought to be very careful to adhere not merely to the highest standards that currently exist but to standards that might in the future be applied retroactively in the court of public opinion, so that even if one has not formally broken the rules, if one has violated what common sense would dictate ought to have been within the rules, one will face consequences in public opinion.

Certainly, the general observation that the upper House could use some internal reform is a proposition that is very reasonable.

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

June 10th, 2014 / 6:50 p.m.

NDP

Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON

Mr. Speaker, as always, it is a great honour to stand in the House representing the people of Timmins—James Bay. The motion before us tonight is on the funding of the Senate. I will not go through the issues of the constitutionality of the Senate in light of the Supreme Court ruling because I do not know if that necessarily needs to be the issue before us tonight.

We are talking about whether or not this body, which was appointed through political favours and choices without any check or balance or any mandate from the Canadian people, has a fundamental accountability to the citizens and taxpayers of this country.

In the 21st century, I have a very hard time with the idea that an institution is above reform, that an institution cannot be reformed. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, the only thing worse than being priest-ridden was squire-ridden. I would say the only thing worse than being squire-ridden is being crony-ridden. This is what we have within this institution. It is an institution that sets its own rules, where people cannot be fired. That is a recipe for corruption and abuse.

This is not to say that there are angels in the House of Commons, certainly not. I would be the last one to say angels even set foot in this room, except perhaps the member for Sherbrooke, who I am certain is very angelic at all the best of times.

We have a mechanism within our impure democracy and in our impure democratic system that people can be removed if they abuse the public trust, because they have to go back and get that mandate from the voters, but that does not exist within the Senate. So the issue is how we, as the elected House representing the people, chosen by the people of Canada to represent their interests, are somehow to be subservient to another class of people who are above the interests of the Canadian people.

This is the time of year when there is all manner of school groups and tourists visiting Ottawa, and they hear the tourist guides who tell them the wonderful story of the Senate. They say that when John A. Macdonald created the House of Commons, he had to create the Senate to protect the minorities, which is why we have a Senate that protects the interests of women, first nations, and people of colour. I hear that from the tourist guides, but that is not what John A. Macdonald had in mind as all. He was not worried about first nation people and women when he set up the Senate. Those were not the minorities he was talking about. He said there will always be more common people than rich people, so we need to protect their interests. Hence the Senate was born.

Since we did not have the long history of the squire system and the knight system and the duke system, we had to do something of our own and that was to pick cronies. People who flipped pancakes at political fundraisers and did the glad-handing for the parties were appointed to the Senate and they were appointed for life. It was supposed to be a chamber of sober second thought, but it has not worked out that way.

The Supreme Court at this point is telling us that this institution is still politically untouchable for overall reform, but it does not say anything about the fundamental need to establish an ethical and financial code of conduct within the Senate to make it accountable.

I have heard from members on the government side that the idea of cutting the funding is absurd and it would be a fundamental attack on the institution. Let them look at the Westminster tradition where members of the House of Lords get paid if they show up; they get a per diem. In the House of Lords it is an honorary position. If we voted for that it would not change the constitutional requirements of the Senate.

That is the background of the issues. I would like to speak about the fundamental lack of accountability. There are not many things on which I would say I have ever agreed with Conservatives in my entire life. I could count on one hand if I held down three fingers. However, the one thing on which I agreed with the Conservatives initially, before they went off the rails and lost their light in the path of darkness, was the issue of the Federal Accountability Act to try to bring an end of the years of cronyism and corruption that existed under the Liberal government.

At that time, when the Federal Accountability Act was first brought forward, there was talk with the members on the government side about the need to establish one set of conflict of interest guidelines that would keep both the House of Commons and the Senate under the same set of standards, but the Senate refused that. The Senate said no; it would not be held accountable to the same standard as the members of Parliament are.

We have Senate conflict of interest rules, with a Senate Ethics Officer, and I have $100 for anybody who knows her name. They are like the Maytag repairmen; they never get out to check on ethical abuse. That is because they need permission. Senate ethics officers need permission from the senators before they can launch an investigation.

Again, there is the lack of accountability mechanisms. Within the Senate, senators are able to sit on the boards of all manner of corporations. We see them sitting on the boards of telecommunications companies, banks, individual financial institutions, and pharmaceutical companies, and yet these are the people who are reviewing legislation and initiating studies.

Why buy a lowly politician, a lowly MP, or a lowly parliamentary secretary, when corporations can just appoint a senator to their board and nobody pays attention?

The senators, God love them, will say they only do these things in the interest of the Canadian people. They will say that the Senate code of conduct forbids senators from attempting to use their position to influence their private interests or their family members' private interests.

However, check out the Senate code of ethics, which is quite funny and should actually be a cartoon because none of it seems to make much sense.

Under section 14:

(1) If a Senator has reasonable grounds to believe that he or she, or a family member, has a private interest that might be affected..., the Senator shall...make a [oral] declaration regarding the general nature of the private interest [at the first opportunity].

Again, how many times has a senator ever stood up and made that declaration? It is almost non-existent.

Under section 15:

(2) A Senator who has reasonable grounds to believe that he or she, or a family member, has a private interest that might be affected by a manner that is before a committee of which the Senator is a member may participate in debate on that matter, provided that a declaration is first made orally on record.

Of course, if it is in camera, we will never know the difference.

I was looking into this issue of the lack of accountability of the Senate and the kind of corruption that has ensued. Most Canadians do not know how the finances are done. In the House of Commons, we have to purchase something and then submit the bill to the House of Commons. It will look at the bill and decide whether or not it gets paid. If it decides it was not within parliamentary business, the bill does not get paid.

Senators, on the other hand, give themselves a credit card. We have people who cannot be fired, who write their own rules, and as we have learned from Duffy and Wallin scandal, it was an honour system, and they get a credit card on top of that.

I asked Canadians back home if they expected anything different from the likes of Wallin and Duffy and Brazeau, when they had their own credit card and could write their own rules.

There are many other loopholes the senators are able to use while sitting on the boards of major corporations. We know from the police investigation into Pamela Wallin that there were all manner of allegations about her flying across the country, doing private business, corporate interest business, and allegedly double-dipping, saying that she was doing Senate business at the same time.

These are the fundamental problems when there is no clear code of ethics. There are many loopholes.

Democracy is identified under section 13(2): Senators are allowed to be involved in discussion and votes in which their family members or the corporations they work for have a financial interest;

Under section 14(4): If a senator declares a conflict of interest at a behind closed doors committee meeting, that declaration will not be made public unless the committee agrees to it.

I already spoke about section 15.

Under section 26(d), senators are allowed to receive updates from trustees who manage their blind trusts.

Under section 30(2), senators are allowed to keep a secret bank account.

Under section 35, a statement of assets and liabilities of each senator is not easily available on the Internet; it is at the Senate Ethics Office in Ottawa. I am not sure if they have changed that. They were under pressure from the latest Senate corruption scandal and were looking at that.

Right now Mike Duffy is being investigated for fraud, but I would refer members back to the RCMP investigation into Raymond Lavigne, who was found guilty of fraud and kicked out of the Liberal caucus in 2006. He hung on in the Senate until 2011 before he finally decided it was time for him to go. He left because if he was convicted, he would lose his pension, and so he left voluntarily. Now Senator Lavigne has been put in the hoosegow.

If we look at the issues surrounding the Lavigne case of fraud, the RCMP raised all the red flags, which are being raised today, about the lack of financial accountability, the fact that Mr. Lavigne could call all the financial shots himself, even while he was committing fraud. There were no oversight mechanisms. This was known in 2006 and in 2011, but nothing was done about it.

Eric Berntson was found guilty of fraud in 2001. He resigned two years after being convicted. Michel Cogger was convicted of influence peddling. He resigned in 2000, two years after being convicted. We have the infamous Andy Thompson who became a senator and promptly moved to Mexico. He showed up 12 times in 7 years to make an appearance and let people know he was still a senator, while he lived on the beaches of Mexico. Hazen Argue was charged with fraud, theft and breach of trust.

Now this is not to say that senators are more naturally corrupt than elected members. The issue is that we have accountability mechanisms put in place to stop issues of corruption whereas the Senate has steadfastly refused.

The motion before us tonight is important because it is a question of whether the $90-some million that is given to the Senate every year has any strings attached to it, that there is any accountability mechanism. My colleagues on the other side will jump up and down and howl at the most impoverished station in how they spend money, but we will give money to that Senate, no strings attached, when we know there is absolute corruption that has gone on, and when it refuses to set any standards of accountability.

Mike Duffy received a $90,000 secret cheque from the Prime Minister's chief of staff. What happened with that is fascinating, because under the Parliament of Canada Act, section 16, to offer money to a sitting senator is a crime. It is an indictable offence.

If we look at the ITO by Corporal Horton of the RCMP, the question that came up again and again was that this was a quid pro quo, and the quid pro quo was to whitewash the audit into Duffy's defrauding of the Canadian people. It is a very serious charge, because the people who sat on that audit committee, Senators Tkachuk, Stewart Olsen and Gerstein, were made aware, according to the RCMP, of this deal.

There were times in the investigation into Wallin and Brazeau when they were not even saying whether they were going to make the audit public. I find that staggering. The audit was about whether taxpayer money was used illegally to defraud people or to put favours to political senators, and that was not necessarily going to be made public from within the secretive institution known as the Senate in an attempt to whitewash it.

We know that when the original audit came out, there was no wrongdoing, but there was political pressure. They had to go back in and miraculously, with the same audit, found all manner of problems. Suddenly, Brazeau, Wallin and Duffy were made to walk the plank politically. This gets us back to the original problem. When we have a system that does not have accountability mechanisms, these things happen.

This is not to say that there not good people over in the Senate. None of them have a democratic mandate, but that is not to say that they are not fundamentally accountable to Canadians at the end of the day, even if they cannot be fired, even if they can sit there until they are 75 and even whether they show up or go off to live in Mexico and come by once a year to pick up a cheque.

Senators are still fundamentally accountable to the Canadian people, but the accountability does not come from them. We have seen their refusal to establish the conflict of interest guidelines that we have. We have seen their refusal to deal with the obvious lobbying issues in terms of senators sitting on corporate boards.

That accountability mechanism must come through the House of Commons. This is our job. Whether we agree on the Senate and whether we agree on abolition, we all have a common duty here to represent the hard-working people back home.

In my region of Timmins—James Bay, people are frustrated. They work really hard for what they have. I have seen more people working two jobs. I still cannot get over meeting a 68-year-old miner at the Tim Hortons in South Porcupine who told me he was going back to work underground because he could not live on his pension.

The government is telling our seniors that they are going to work until they are 67 now before they can collect that pension. That is okay if they choose to do that, but, again, if they come from a region where people do really hard work and they get worn out by the time they are 65, working until they are 67 is very difficult when their CPP is a maximum of $12,000 a year if they do not have a pension. These people are paying for the largesse for the senators.

There is another mechanism that we have in Parliament. We are limited in terms of our travel. There is travel for committee work and for parliamentary work. However, the limits to choose where senators go and how they go does not seem to exist within the Senate. It is like a perpetual holiday, whatever they want to study, wherever they want to go. There is always the famous story of the senators who felt they needed to go to Mexico in January to study poverty. I would invite them to Fort Albany in January, they could have seen poverty there. However, no, they were on the beaches in Mexico in January at taxpayer expense.

I am asking the folks back home and I am asking my colleagues in the Conservative Party this. There needs to be a wake-up call to this institution because it has shown itself fundamentally defiant in the basic nature of reform. The senators think they are going to ride out this scandal. They have thrown Mike Duffy under the bus. They have tossed Patrick Brazeau overboard. Pamela Wallin has gone for the high jump. However, they will circle the wagons on the rest of them.

We will see, six years after Raymond Lavigne went to jail for fraud, that all the red flags that were raised about the spending mechanisms in the upper chamber will have been ignored. We can see from the Auditor General's report that all the red flags about their lack of basic controls on financial spending were ignored, which has led to this. This group of people believe it will ride this out again.

We can put up our hands and say that the Supreme Court told us it is not reformable, but the Supreme Court said nothing about holding it to account. The day we say that people who were chosen to sit for life above the Canadian people do not have any accountability to Canadian taxpayers would be a pretty sad day for Canada and for Canadian democracy.

I ask my hon. colleagues to think about this. I know they think this is brought forward every year and they see this as an issue that is somehow a joke to them, but I do not think it is a joke. The issue of accountability in the Senate is fundamentally an issue of representing and showing respect for people who pay the taxes for what we do here. People who are working very hard and getting very little back see the largesse that is happening in the Senate, with their credit cards, their flights. They see the fact that they are sitting on boards and doing all manner of business when they should be doing government business.

To the financial issues, we can have that discussion. If senators are only working here one-third of the time, then their flights should be a lot more limited than ours. We have to go home on the weekends to represent our constituencies because our constituents expect to see us. They do not expect to see the senators.

Again, now that Frank Mahovlich is retired and Roméo Dallaire is gone, let us do another Trivial Pursuit question for folks back home. How many senators can they name? Excluding the ones that are under investigation for corruption, they cannot name them because the senators do not see themselves as accountable to those folks. They are accountable.

Tonight, let us put this out there. We need to start this discussion. If it is not about the abolition of the Senate, if it is not about changing the term limits of the Senate, it can be about establishing some conflict of interest guidelines, establishing some rules on lobbying and establishing really clear limits on this crowd of senators, who have been blowing through taxpayer money since John A. Macdonald, so they will finally be held financially accountable to the people of Canada.

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

7:10 p.m.

Liberal

Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB

Mr. Speaker, it is a bit much, listening to my colleague from the NDP benches talk about accountability, given the exercise I have had to go through in trying to ensure accountability of his own political party and his own leadership.

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

7:10 p.m.

NDP

Robert Chisholm NDP Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS

That's comparable. Sure.

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

7:10 p.m.

Liberal

Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB

Yes, Mr. Speaker, there are some comparable issues here.

I would point out two things. It has been a challenge getting the NDP members to accept responsibility and accountability for money they should seriously look at in the creation of their satellite office in Quebec, which was in clear violation of the rules. This is not just what politicians are saying. This is also coming from the administration. However, they have resisted any accountability on that issue.

On the issue of the Senate, my question for the member is this. Could he be very clear and indicate that for us to make many of the changes the NDP has been proposing for years, it would require the support of the provinces? Surely to goodness, the member knows that. However, he still wants to give the impression that he and the NDP have the power to reform the Senate without working with the provinces in a very tangible fashion. He might want to provide comment on that.

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

7:10 p.m.

NDP

Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON

Mr. Speaker, I am so glad to be here on the night shift with my hon. colleague, who is sort of like the Ezra Levant of the Liberal Party when it comes to accuracy. I am certainly enjoying his attempt to go and burn the witches on the New Democratic Party's doorstep, but he just cannot seem to find the matches.

Therefore, I will do this lesson really simply. We are going to spell this out: G-o-m-e-r-y. The most corrupt government in history was the Liberals.

Let us talk about David Smith, appointed to the Senate for life, who runs the Liberals' campaigns. Let us talk about Keith Davey. Let us talk about all the Liberal senators who are trolling the country, raising money for them. Let us talk about Raymond Lavigne who is in the hoosegow. Let us talk about Mac Harb, one of the great Liberals. Mac Harb, who is also under investigation, was over in Bangladesh with his senatorial passport, working for Niko Resources in what was one of the biggest Bangladeshi corruption cases ever. They said that he was a good Liberal. Imagine the bad Liberals if Mac Harb was one of the good ones.

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

7:10 p.m.

Some hon. members

Oh, oh!

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

7:15 p.m.

Conservative

The Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

Order, please. I just want to point out to the House, there are seven minutes left of questions and comments. If members feel they have to say something, they should try to seek the floor and do it when they do have the floor and not interrupt members who are either asking questions or responding to them.

I will open up the floor now. Question and comments, the hon. member for Nanaimo—Cowichan.

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

7:15 p.m.

NDP

Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC

Mr. Speaker, the member for Timmins—James Bay was in full flight there. I will give him an opportunity to continue that because what we have seen is a history of both Liberals and Conservatives appointing their cronies, their bagmen and women to the Senate.

Would he like to continue elucidating us on the numbers of people who have been appointed to the Senate and who simply do not do the job that Canadians expect?

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

7:15 p.m.

NDP

Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON

Mr. Speaker, in fairness, and I think my hon. colleagues would agree, I do not think I have ever said anything nice about the Conservatives, maybe ever. However, every now then they get the issue that there is a problem over in the Senate. The party that does not, that refuses, that will stand up and say, “We will not allow you to insult these great Canadians”, the people who created the corruption machine, is the Liberal Party. This is the Liberals' baby.

Therefore, when the occasional, part-time worker from Papineau comes into the House, what does he say? He says that he will fix the Senate by choosing better people. We will choose Liberals. Again, it is bad. It is good Liberals, it is better people. They see themselves as better than the rest of us. They see themselves as better than the average hard-working people who pay their taxes so that they and their cronies can travel around the world and go to their cocktail parties with the rest of the Laurentian crowd. Then they have the nerve to come in here and ask how we can even talk about financial accountability when it comes to the grand pooh-bahs who have made Canada the place it is.

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

7:15 p.m.

Conservative

The Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

I would give the floor to the hon. member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, but I am worried that there are may be other conversations going on that might distract him. However, if I get the sense that things are calming over there, I will give the floor to the hon. member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor.

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

7:15 p.m.

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL

Mr. Speaker, I just have a quick question. The very nub of this issue is to deny the money that goes to fund the activities within the Senate. Does the member realize, too, is that it would also defund people who work for the Senate, and that many of the employees are unionized?

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

7:15 p.m.

NDP

Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON

Mr. Speaker, that is fascinating. I thought that the only party that had any unionized staff was the New Democratic Party, so I am fascinated about the Senate.

The issue here is that this is a complete side issue. Notice that the Liberals are now suddenly defending the working people who had to carry the bags for Senator Mac Harb when he was going off on his international journeys as a lobbyist for Niko Resources. We are talking about holding that bunch to some level of financial accountability, but we never, ever hear a Liberal stand up and talk about the financial accountability of their cronies, because they filled that place with their bagmen and their operators.

This has been the system of corruption that they created. Now we have them standing up tonight and saying that they are suddenly concerned about the hard-working secretaries. My God. The gall.

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

7:15 p.m.

NDP

Robert Chisholm NDP Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS

Mr. Speaker, I have only been in the House for three years, so I have not had the opportunity to hear the member for Timmins—James Bay go on about this issue in the way that he has, and to clearly articulate what the problems are with the Senate. In this forum, we are talking about holding some accountability on $92 million and the fact that not only will the government not respond, but the Liberal Party will not respond as to why Canadians deserve to have some answers and understand why we do not have a better sense of control over that $92 million.

Could the member explain to us why these two parties continue to fight to protect the Senate and that $92 million of taxpayers' money that gets flushed down the toilet every single year?

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

7:20 p.m.

NDP

Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for understanding the fundamental issue before us tonight. We are not talking about defying the Supreme Court. We are talking about our job as the elected members of this House representing the taxpayers of this country to establish some manner of rules.

We have given the crowd in the so-called upper chamber 150 years to reform themselves. They refused. When the Accountability Act was brought in, they said that they were exempt from it. They limited the ability of the investigative officer, the ethics officer for the Senate, to even begin an investigation without their permission. That is how defiant they are. They believe that they are above us.

If we look at the House of Lords, they only get paid if they show up. They only get a per diem. That is not a bad model. That has nothing to do with the constitutionality of the Senate. We have to put the financial spending of the Senate on the table, because every Canadian has been told to tighten the belt. Every Canadian has been told that the cupboard is bare.

My hon. Liberal colleagues said nothing about the fact that the government is going after the pensions of civil servants, or the fact that people have to make their medical payments when they retire. The crowd over in the Senate—

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

7:20 p.m.

NDP

Robert Chisholm NDP Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS

EI.

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

7:20 p.m.

NDP

Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON

Mr. Speaker, EI. There was $57 billion that the Liberals stole from hard-working people. They probably gave it to the Senate for all we know, because there is no accountability. That is the issue

The bigger issue is the fact that senators can sit on the boards of all matter of corporations. Why waste money if people are lobbyists? Do not waste money trying to buy a lowly member of Parliament; just go and appoint a senator to the board of directors and get all of the august pooh-bahs of the great Liberal establishment to sit on all of those boards. They are in telecommunications, banking, and pharmacies. They have been doing it for years—

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

7:20 p.m.

Conservative

The Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

Order, please. We will move on to the next member.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor.

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

7:20 p.m.

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL

Mr. Speaker, the issue here is regarding the votes in funding the institutions that we have in this country, such as the Senate in this particular case, and denying the funds. I questioned the member earlier about the money surrounding the support staff because that is a pertinent question. The vote we are having denies the funding of that institution. That includes not just the senators, but the support staff as well. I am not sure the member understood the gist of my question.

What was said about the behaviour of many of the senators, in many cases, yes, nefarious in many of these instances and I agree with his outrage in many cases. Is the Senate in a situation right now where it is becoming more accountable? Yes, it is, but we all are as parliamentarians.

The complaint was that some senators were out campaigning on public funds. Imagine that. That is a violation of the money that we are receiving here from taxpayers to do our jobs. We cannot take this money and go out and campaign. My hon. colleague who just spoke was in Labrador during the byelection. Perhaps he could explain to us how that was paid for. And several other members from the NDP were there. Were the flights and meals covered by the party itself? Just asking.

I would also like to talk about the Senate and the Supreme Court decision, but one of the things that disturbs me beyond the question that is being asked about the funding of the Senate itself is regarding the fundamental concept of the sober second thought, the original concept of the Senate way back when. I know my colleague from the NDP talked about it. It was originally set up to protect the rich. If we go to the Debates, yes, a lot of these upper-middle-class people comprised the Senate, but really it was about sober second thought and the binding of regions in a very large country. The regions being Ontario, Quebec, and the three Maritime provinces.

When we started with the Constitution there had been several amendments to the Constitution pertaining to many aspects of Parliament. How do we change the Constitution in the future? My Conservative friend from Ontario earlier talked about a concept of what is contained within the Constitution Act, 1982, sections 38 to 44, which talks about how we can change the Constitution pertaining to the Senate. Do we have an elected Senate or do we have an abolished Senate? I use those two examples for very good reason.

The Conservatives want to have an elected Senate. I am sorry if I am paraphrasing too much. The NDP members want to abolish the Senate, which I do not think I am paraphrasing, I think that is about it. Fundamentally what the Supreme Court said was in order to do this, according to the Constitution and the federation that we are in, we need permission of the legislatures of each of the provinces in this country, along with Parliament's okay.

Earlier I talked about the NDP members getting rid of the Senate and that was not true. I was mistaken. They go way back. They talked about it from the very beginning even when they were the CCF. What I take issue with is that the concept of bringing the provinces into this conversation about getting rid of the Senate never took place. Where is the work to be done in order to abolish the Senate? I joked that for many members of the NDP it became a Twitter campaign, “let's abolish the Senate #disingenuous”, but the problem is the work was not done.

I do not know of any conversation that the federal party has had with provinces to decide how to deal with the Senate, not just abolishing it but electing it, appointing it, nine-year terms, 13-year terms, all the concepts that were upheld by the Supreme Court in its recent decision. People were shocked and said they could not believe the Supreme Court would say that all provinces were needed to abolish the Senate. I am not a constitutional lawyer and I am not surprised that is what it said. Nobody was. Yet it became a campaign in doing something that is just not possible to do.

Let us put aside the element of sober second thought and whether this is fundamental to our country. Provinces got rid of their senates, other countries get rid of their upper chambers, that is true, but in order to have that conversation in this country, it seems to me that the two parties never opened that conversation, never opened the idea of conversing about getting rid of the Senate or electing the Senate.

Every now and then there would be a musing from a province about what it wanted to do. The premier of Saskatchewan wanted to abolish the Senate. Why did he say that? I do not know. Certainly the NDP never asked. He just came out with it and volunteered the information. Other provinces had the same reservations. Other provinces wanted an elected Senate, but nobody was really engaged in that conversation whatsoever.

Let me return to what the Supreme Court said. For fundamental changes in the Constitution, how we change the Constitution, one says that we need seven out of 10 provinces that represent over 50% of the population. Ergo, we come into the idea of an elected Senate, or a consulted one, like how the Prime Minister consults with the public. What the Prime Minister wanted to happen was to allow the provinces to run these elections. I did not see any first ministers conference by the current Prime Minister, stating, “Oh, by the way, this is what we want you to do”. Therefore, it was more of a conversation of, “We think this is a good idea, now come on you people, get on with it”.

When the Prime Minister talks about starting a conversation with the provinces, he does not start conversations with provinces. He starts arguments with provinces. In this case, with the NDP, it is an ignored argument. It is an ignored conversation. It is one thing if they were able to do it, if they were able to unilaterally make the changes of getting rid of the Senate and not bother talking to the provinces. That is one thing. Someone could call that being very brazen, to say the least, very arrogant, but they cannot even do that.

For years, was it not incumbent upon a federal party such as the NDP to even ask how it could do it? We always use the expression the ends justify the means. This end was not going to happen because the means would not justify it to happen. It is almost like the Constitution did not exist. It was like an imaginary piece of paper that hung on the wall like some kind of glorified magna carta that people looked at as some kind of map and said, “This is what we used to be”. The Constitution is not what we used to be, the Constitution is what we are. It is a living, breathing document that we use to govern our country.

Ergo, in 1982, we received the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for that very reason. It was not just an add-on to say this is a nice thing to say, it was an add-on because the courts could use it, and we as legislators must adhere to it, which was illustrated by a few of their decisions recently, certainly in the past two years. That is why I say #disingenuous.

Certainly somebody in the party had to say at some point, “We can't do this”. Therefore, what do we do? Now we are going to say, “Let's make sure the Senate does not get money in order to operate”. What the hell is that going to do? Seriously. It gets to the point where it is like if we lose the game, we take our ball and go home, except we do not even go home, we just side on the sidelines and pout with ball in hand. “Fine. We are not going to give you the ball. We're going to sit here, but we're not going to give you the ball”.

Sometimes debate in this House elevates itself to a level where it becomes informative. Then there is the debate that degrades itself into becoming absolutely ridiculous. It is the theatre of the absurd. If we want to make a statement, the statement was already said by them. Again, I acknowledge the fact that it is not a recent thing for the NDP/CCF. It goes way back. However, the question was always “what” as opposed to “how”.

They knock our party for not having ideas on certain issues. This is the longest non-idea issue they have ever had. It absolutely is bereft of any road map, of any GPS, of anything. We are going to do this just because. I am going to take a long walk on a short wharf just because. I am not going to tell people how I am going to do it. It is just going to happen. It becomes this argument they put up every now and then based on the lowest common denominator.

They brought out the names of the people who cheated the Senate in the worst kind of way, and I agree with them that it was the worst kind of way. What happened was a dereliction of duty, to put it mildly, but it was also something that was an absolute disgrace for the Canadian taxpayer.

Recently there have been actions by all parties. Some people get in trouble and get ejected from caucus. That happens. It has happened recently to them. Would I disband the NDP? No. However, for some reason, they can take the lowest common denominator and extrapolate it to a solution, which is to just get rid of them.

They say it has no democratic value whatsoever, but actually, their idea of abolishing the Senate flies in the face of democratic values. If we abolish the Senate, a vote has to take place, not just in this legislature but also in 10 legislatures across this country. Each legislature of course has a mandate from the people. If the elected people of, say, the greatest province, Newfoundland and Labrador, bias accepted—

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

7:30 p.m.

Conservative

Chris Alexander Conservative Ajax—Pickering, ON

And the last province.

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

7:30 p.m.

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL

Yes, you're right.

Mr. Speaker, let us say the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, through their elected representatives, the members of the House of Assembly, vote to keep the Senate. What would be the answer from the NDP? It would be “sorry, too bad; unilaterally we do not care about your vote”. Let us assume that they want to do a referendum. Now we are talking. If that is what they want to do, to me that is the only thing I can see the NDP doing. My question is this. Would they have a referendum across the nation, like the Charlottetown Accord? According to the Supreme Court in its recent decision, they need unanimity to get rid of the Senate, unanimity of all provinces. Therefore, they have to have a referendum in each and every province.

Concurrence in Vote 1--SenateMain Estimates, 2014-15

7:30 p.m.

Liberal

Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB

And pass them.