Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her very eloquent speech. She has really shed a lot of light on the nature of the debate today. It is about whether this House agrees to continue to fund the Senate in Canada to the tune of $92 million.
I come from a province, Ontario, that also used to have a Senate. It abolished it many years ago, as did a number of other provinces and as have many other countries in the world.
When we meet people from other countries and talk about the Canadian Senate, they think of a senator as someone who has been elected and who is democratically accountable to the electorate. They do not fully understand that, in fact, many of those who are in the Senate are failed candidates from the governing party, people who have been fundraisers, loyal campaigners, and so on. They are basically partisans who have been put in the Senate as some kind of reward. As a quid pro quo, they often continue to work on behalf of their political party.
Some have said that they do some good work and that there are some studies that they have done. Perhaps my colleague could answer, then, what kind of studies $92 million could actually buy. If the point of the Senate is to do the odd study that might be of use, how many studies could $92 million buy the Canadian people?