Madam Speaker, every time we turn around it seems the Senate is costing Canadians another million dollars. In question period, I have asked about the Privy Council Office spending more than a million dollars a year to fund the supposedly independent advisory board for Senate appointments. I have also asked about the government leader in the Senate requesting almost a million dollars to manage these independent senators on behalf of the Liberal government.
I am very interested in hearing the government's explanation as to why it has a leader in the Senate requesting all of these managerial resources if its senators are truly independent of government direction.
The broader question that I would like to explore is whether we need to have a Senate at all. The classic argument for bicameralism is that the upper House provides a sober second thought. There are very few examples in Canadian political history of the Senate actually performing that role.
An interesting point of comparison would be at the provincial level. I do not think many Canadians are saying, “If only we had an upper house in our provincial legislature, our province would have better laws. If only our premier appointed a group of people to review the work of elected members of the legislative assembly, the governance of our province would be improved.”
That is not what we are hearing in the coffee shops in Regina, and I do not think we are hearing it anywhere else in our great country. In fact, all of the eight provinces that ever had upper houses in their legislatures have abolished those upper houses. Therefore, it seems that the consensus in favour of abolition is actually quite strong.
We sometimes hear the argument that while we do not need upper houses in our provincial legislatures, we should have one at the federal level to represent the diverse regions of our great country. In our very decentralized federation, the real source of regional representation is strong and legitimate provincial governments, not senators here in Ottawa.
It would be very interesting to put that concept to the test. The Government of Canada could initiate a Senate abolition transfer equivalent to the $90 million a year currently spent on the Senate. Those funds could be directly transferred to provincial governments in proportion to the number of Senate seats that their province currently has. For example, Prince Edward Island currently has 4 out of 105 senators. Therefore, it would be entitled to well over $3 million per year from the Senate abolition transfer.
The government and the people of Prince Edward Island have far better things they could do with more than $3 million than to support four senators here in Ottawa. However, an interesting thing would be to put that concept to the test by giving provincial governments the choice to either maintain the Senate or to abolish it and use the money for other purposes.