Mr. Speaker, I also want to say a few words on the bill before the House. This is a bill has been before the House before. The bill was split into two parts, one dealing with gun control regulations and the other one dealing with animal rights and animal welfare. The bill was split in two parts by the Senate.
The NDP supports Bill C-10B in terms of the animal rights and the animal welfare part of the bill. We have made that clear before in debate.
What has happened in the other place is that the Senate decided to weaken the bill through amendments that it has sent back to the House of Commons.
This place is elected and members are responsible to the people of this country. The Senate is not elected and senators are not accountable. The Senate is not a democratic institution.
I believe the House of Commons should make amendments to bills and that it should be predominant in any kind of a standoff between the two Houses. I think that is very important.
It is very important that we do not get into the situation where we have a precedent built where the unelected chamber is able to send a bill back to the House with several amendments and the House does not return the bill rejecting those amendments.
There is no place in a democratic society for an unelected legislative institution. This is an institution that changes laws. I am sure, Mr. Speaker, that you are amongst the 90% to 95% of the Canadian population that does not agree that we should have the Senate as it exists today. About 90% to 95% of people polled have shown time and time again that they do not want to keep this unelected institution. I guess the 95% of people who are saying that are divided as to whether or not we should just abolish the Senate all together or whether or not we should have an elected chamber.
If we were to have an elected chamber, we would get into the debate as to what kinds of powers that particular House should have. I have seen this debate go on year after year. In fact, this was one of the big stalemates in the constitutional debate of 1981-82. It was also a big stalemate prior to Charlottetown.
I remember the negotiations of the House of Commons special committee that I had the privilege of sitting on for a number of months. The committee talked about everything in terms of the Constitution back in 1991, after Meech Lake collapsed in 1992-93.
We had the Beaudoin-Dobbie committee and the Beaudoin-Edwards committee. We dealt with the division of powers, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, minority languages, and everything that was in the Constitution, an amending formula, et cetera. The most difficult issue we faced on that particular House of Commons all party committee was the question of the Senate, and what should be done about the other place. Everywhere the committee went people wanted to either abolish the Senate or have one that was elected that reflected the people of the country.
I am hesitant to accept amendments that come from the other place when it does not have a mandate from the Canadian people. In fact, the amendments that the Senate moved to Bill C-10B in terms of animal rights and animal welfare weaken the bill. We have had no changes in terms of animal welfare legislation since 1892. Here we have a bill that has gone through the House of Commons and it is now being weakened by the Senate.
I think the time has come where we do one of two things: we either reform and elect, with different powers, the other place, or else we abolish it. My position is very clear; we should abolish it. In fact, we had at one time five different provinces that had a senate or an upper house. If we were to go to Prince Edward Island and look at the Legislative Assembly in P.E.I., we could visit the chamber that was the upper house. It is the same thing in Quebec. In fact, Quebec was the last province that abolished its upper house. There were five provinces that had an upper house, but they do not have one today.
I believe we could take the original purpose of the Senate, which was the power of a check and balance on the House of Commons, and incorporate it into this place through parliamentary reform.
If we had stronger, more independent parliamentary committees, free election of chairs, the right of a committee to initiate its own legislation and bring it into the House, to timetable legislation, and fewer non-confidence votes, then we could bring the checks and balances, which the Senate is supposed to represent, into the House of Commons. If we were to do that, this place would be a much more democratic place and more representative of the people of the country.
We all know how exciting it is to see a free vote in private members' hour on a controversial issue but if we had stronger committees they would be able to take a stand more often in opposition to the Prime Minister of the country. I think that is the direction in which we should be going.
I have been open in the past to the election of the other place. In fact, I was a supporter of the Charlottetown accord and did a lot of work across the country campaigning for that accord on the “Yes” side. Part of that accord was a vision of an elected Senate with regional equality and greatly reduced powers. However, no matter how we looked at it, it became very difficult to come up with a configuration of the Senate that was accepted by all the Canadian people.
I noticed in a press release that the future prime minister, the member for LaSalle—Émard, still supports in principle the idea of a triple-e Senate as pushed by the Alliance, but it is very difficult to push the triple-e equality across the country when we give the same number of senators to Prince Edward Island, Quebec and Ontario. Prince Edward Island has 120,000 to 130,000 people and Ontario has 10 million or 11 million people but both would have an equal number of senators.
To change the Senate we would need a constitutional amendment which requires the agreement of at least seven out of ten provinces, representing half of the people in the country. The only way we will get agreement from Quebec, which has 7 million to 7.5 million people, with its distinct difference from the other provinces because of its language, culture and civil law, and the only way we will get agreement from Ontario to have an equal number of senators per province, is to have the powers in the Senate so radically reduced that it would become almost meaningless.
If the powers were so radically reduced then we would have a backlash in many other smaller provinces as to why bother at all. It is like the dog chasing its tail. It is a never ending story that I have seen during my 30 years in Parliament. It has been a never ending story since Confederation.
I am really surprised with the Alliance Party members. They always talk about smaller government, less government and too many politicians. If we had an elected Senate in the country we would legitimize the place immediately because they would be elected and have the same mandate as we have in the House of Commons. If we were to do that the expenditure on the Senate would not be the current $60 million a year. It would double or triple because senators would need riding offices, many more committees, facilities and services in order to reflect what their electors would be saying and put them on an equal par with the House of Commons.
We would then have another 100-plus politicians in the country. I do not think we need that. I think we can bring those checks and balances, that sober second thought into the House of Commons by reforming this place, by making sure our committees are meaningful, by having fewer confidence votes, by having fixed election days, fixed throne speech days and fixed budget days. We would take away some of the powers that are now in the Prime Minister's Office and Privy Council Office and distribute them around the House of Commons to all members, as all members of the House should be equal.
However that has not happened. I remember about a year ago reading the autobiography of John Crosbie who used to be the minister of transport. He wrote that one of the goals of Brian Mulroney when he came to office was to abolish the Senate. However when he became prime minister he came under pressure to appoint some of his friends to the Senate, and then more friends and more friends and he continued down the same old merry trail. The same thing has happened ever since Confederation.
We have people sitting in the other place, most of whom are decent and hard-working people, but some of them have abysmal attendance records because they are accountable to absolutely no one.
