Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise to speak to this motion, which seeks to give the Senate $57 million or so in funding.
I will be honoured to vote against that motion, so that we do not send millions of dollars more to an institution that, as we know, is not very good with its money. What is more, as we speak, this spending is being examined and called into question by several authorities, and rightly so.
I urge all of my colleagues to do as I am doing and vote against the motion to ensure that no more money is wasted by the Senate or spent in a questionable manner by senators. This obviously brings me to talk about that institution. I would therefore like to provide some background on the institution we are talking about today.
The Senate is an unelected body made up of senators who were obviously never elected by the Canadian people. They are accountable to just one person: the person who appointed them. The current Prime Minister has appointed over 59 senators. These senators are accountable only to the current Prime Minister, the Conservative Prime Minister. They are not accountable to anyone else. When they spend money and that spending is called into question, the only person they have to answer to is the Prime Minister. They do not have to answer to Canadians.
It is obvious how deeply involved the Prime Minister's Office is in Senate affairs. We know that on several occasions, the Prime Minister and his office tried to erase parts of Senate reports and change the content. The institution is clearly archaic, and we cannot allow it to go on. The people of Sherbrooke cannot stand it anymore either.
Often when I am in Sherbrooke, I hear people say that they are tired of seeing that institution vote on our laws without being elected or accountable to anyone. It is a relic. The current Prime Minister said the same thing a number of years ago. That institution is a relic of the 19th century that should be abolished or reformed. This same Prime Minister has appointed 59 senators, 10 of whom were Conservative candidates who were defeated in elections.
In the election in 2011, some senators who had resigned from their duties as senators to run in the election lost. This means that the people in the ridings in which they ran said that they did not want those people as their MP. A few weeks later, the Prime Minister shamelessly turned around and reappointed them as senators.
Some people will argue that senators are eminent Canadian intellectuals, when we all know that these appointments are simply partisan. Of course, it is hard to beat the Liberals on that, but I do not think that any other prime minister has gone as far when it comes to appointing senators. This is despite the fact that he once called the Senate a relic of the 19th century.
What I mainly gather from the debate of the last few hours is that two parties are acting like cowards. Leaders, party leaders and MPs are cowards and are afraid of constitutional discussions—