Joe Jordan

[The Senate, November 20th, 2001]

Of sober thought, my colleague adds.

I would just point to very recent times and the role the Senate played in the clarity bill and the role it is currently playing in the anti-terrorism legislation. To somehow equate the method they are chosen by and the legitimacy is, I think, a bit of a stretch.

Senate reform has been an ongoing debate in the country. It is certainly nothing new. The Charlottetown proposal was part of a larger attempt to bring closure to a constitutional issue. Again, I do not think Canadians have an appetite right now to open up that constitutional debate. We might be able to find a collection of people who say the existing system is not meeting whatever needs they define as being important, but I would further suggest that finding a common ground on what that solution should be will prove extremely difficult, not that I do not think that exercise needs to be undertaken.

To go back to the Australian model, what they have with two elected houses is deadlock between the two. In our system the Senate very rarely vetoes bills coming from the House of Commons. It may try to improve them, but it does not exercise its constitutional veto because it understands that the elected body has supremacy.

In Australia it has evolved into two elected bodies, two partisan houses, which do not serve any real purpose. If we are to go down that road then we have to take a serious look at what the NDP is proposing, because an elected Senate, as far as I am concerned, does not make a whole lot of sense in the larger scheme of how government in this country works. In Australia, the other thing that happens with an elected senate is that pressure builds because it is pretty hard to defend the regional allocation of seats or states.

If we look at quotes very recently by one of the Australian senators from Tasmania, he himself said that he could no longer defend the fact that a small state like Tasmania is given equal representation as larger states.

Again I would just caution my hon. colleague that on the surface it may look like a good idea but the unintended consequences have to be taken into consideration.

In terms of Senate reform and what people mean by Senate reform, that too has evolved over time. Until very recently, Senate reform proposals and motions in this place and the other place have focused on what the Senate does and reforming that appointed body. Very recently Senate reform has become absolutely fixated on the election of senators and how they are chosen. It somehow equates that method of selection with legitimacy in terms of the role they play in the government.

I do not know what the issue is that the member has with the appointment process. We appoint the judiciary in the country as is done at the federal level in the United States. It is not an uncommon system. The role of the Senate is clearly defined and it performs that role well. I firmly believe that if we were to go ahead and make this one change we would be eroding regional representation. We would have a hard time convincing colleagues from Atlantic Canada that it is a good idea.

Let us look at what the current Senate is made up of. Right now about one-third of the senators are women compared to about one-fifth of the MPs in this House. Which is more representative of Canada? It is the highest percentage of women in any Canadian legislative body. In fact it is the fifth highest of any legislative body in the world.

There are politicians from the House of Commons, from provincial legislatures, municipal politicians, lawyers, doctors, religious leaders, musicians, hockey players, farmers, teachers, journalists, business people, federal and provincial civil servants, men and women with deep roots in volunteer and political activities. Their average age is about 12 years older than the average age in the House of Commons. They bring considerable experience and life experiences.

[The Senate, November 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise to speak on the motion introduced by my colleague from Port Moody--Coquitlam. I was struck by the content of his speech. It seems to be some sort of rationalization as to why his party voted against Charlottetown.

I would suggest to him that Senate reform is certainly not an issue that is new to the House. About seven years after the BNA Act was brought into law, I think, the House debated Senate reform. I think the Senate itself started debating Senate reform in 1909 in terms of suggesting that there be term limits and that the provinces play a role in the appointment of the senators.

The fundamental argument or discussion we are having here today is about the system of government we have. I find it strange that a party which continually argues for democracy and for decentralization of power would then turn around and chastise the Prime Minister for not summarily throwing the constitution out the window and changing the rules of how the country is governed just because Alberta has a Senate election.

I think there is an inherent contradiction in that statement, in that scorched earth policy that the Alliance Party brought in, and the Reform Party before it, until they realized that it was burning the ground under their own feet. How can they come to Ottawa and decide, in the course of a year and a half, that somehow they have all the answers and they will fix our system of Senate reform?

The system of government that we have in this country is a system that has evolved. This government has said consistently that it is open to looking at the issue of Senate reform. However, the issue of Senate reform is far and away wider and more complex than simply putting in a process to elect senators.

The hon. member says we should look at Australia. We absolutely should look at Australia if we want to understand the effect of unintended consequences. If we look at parliaments that have derived from the British parliamentary system, they are systems that are rooted in majoritarianism: the majority rules. That is the system we have. We do not have the American system. Australia has taken on a bit of a combination, with an elected senate.

What we have that Australia does not is the supremacy of one House. We have an elected body and a Senate that is appointed and serves, in Sir John A. Macdonald's terms, as a House of “sober second thought”. This member can stand up here and rail against the effectiveness of the Senate--

[Canada National Marine Conservation Areas Act, November 19th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, on a point of order, stop handing the floor to him.

[Canada National Marine Conservation Areas Act, November 19th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. That member knows it is unparliamentary to refer to the presence or absence of a member in the House.

[Canadian Wheat Board Act, November 19th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The member will know that the procedure and House affairs committee is currently under an order of the House to review the votability of private members' business. His continued attempts to politicize this process are not helpful.

[Committees of the House, November 8th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, there have been consultations among House leaders and I believe if you were to seek it that you would find support for the following motion. I move:

That the Special Committee on non-medical use of drugs be authorized to broadcast its proceedings and to travel to Montreal and Vancouver.

[Supply, October 29th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I hope the member is not suggesting that we as Canadians are not proud of the efforts of our international development agencies. It is contingent upon all of us to take steps forward on this file.

The purpose of my speech was primarily aimed at some of the people who today tried to criticize the policies of Canada as somehow being spendthrift, out of control and a waste of money. That is not the case at all. If the hon. member is suggesting that we need to increase our efforts in this area, I agree. However I would also suggest to him that that has to be a non-partisan effort. Anybody who feels that way has to work together to try to accomplish that.

We can see from today's debate that sometimes we are up against some pretty harsh critics. Sometimes we are up against people who have convinced themselves that international development aid is what we want and we kick the crumbs to some other country. I would suggest that there are tremendous opportunities. A rising tide tends to lift all vessels.

I know from the past speeches of the hon. member and his gestures in the House that he feels very strongly about this issue. I look forward to working with him to move this item forward.

[Supply, October 29th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I find myself in a rather unusual situation as a politician because I can actually speak with some knowledge on this issue.

I congratulate the House for entertaining this motion because we have had approximately 45 to 50 hours of debate in the House dealing specifically with the coalition initiative against terrorism. That is an important item that needs to be discussed. However today's motion brings a semblance of balance to the debate.

If our actions are targeted toward the terrorists, it is incumbent on the partners in the coalition to make sure that they are there on the ground to make sure the civilians in those countries understand not only by language but by action that this is what we intend to do.

I congratulate my colleague from Lac-Saint-Jean--Saguenay for sponsoring this motion. I am comforted that someone at that tender age takes this issue seriously because it is an extremely serious issue. Global poverty is something that we must come to grips with sooner or later. The sooner we do it, the easier the solution will be on everybody.

The reason I prefaced my comments by saying I thought I could speak to this issue is that I was a teacher in my former life and spent a number of years overseas on international projects that CIDA funded. I will target my remarks to those experiences because I get concerned when I hear criticisms about Canada's international development aid policy. I believe that with the experiences I have had I have a right to address some of those misconceptions.

I spent two years on a project in Ethiopia in the 1980s. To bring credibility to my argument, the Liberals were not in power at the time. The development staff on the ground and the embassy personnel were of the highest quality in terms of making sure that Canadian taxpayer money was spent efficiently and in a manner consistent with the objectives and the values underscored in CIDA's documents.

One of the issues that we focus on in international aid as Canadians is the notion of women and development. We have learned that if we are to get at the root causes of poverty, treating the causes as opposed to the symptoms, we must ensure that the women in the country are engaged in any solution that is being proposed. That is an oversimplification, but money spent to increase the capacity of women in countries is money that manifests itself in a higher standard of living for children. Canada makes sure that the projects it undertakes address the issue of women and development. I encourage the government to continue to make that important intervention.

One of the things that struck me in Ethiopia was that a lot of the aid was very politicized. Ethiopia is a strategically located country. Over the years it was important to this country or that country and a lot of money went to Ethiopia. I saw $80,000 tractors at the side of the road because there was no gasoline. One of the things that Canadian aid focuses on is sustainability. We have to be able to sustain development otherwise when the aid runs out the project runs out.

One of the most successful projects I saw was a German one. It developed a very simple prototype for an ox pulled cart based on the rear wheel assembly of a Volkswagen bug because there were thousands of these cars littering the landscape. These were built by the Cubans, interestingly enough. There were no spare parts and no gasoline to run these cars. Sometimes low technology must be used that matches the technology of the country.

Before I leave Africa, one of the proudest moments I had was when I went to one of the water wells and saw it identified as a Canadian project. Another aspect of Canadian development aid relating to the root causes of health is clean water.

Every Canadian can be extremely proud of the fact that we have drilled literally thousands of wells and maintained and trained local personnel to maintain clean water supplies so that the children who drink the water are getting clean water and are not getting viruses and other things from their water which in most cases would end up killing them.

I then spent three years on a CIDA project in Hungary. This was a different situation because one of the things that happened in that country after the fall of the communist economic system was that lawyers previously employed by the state were essentially told to hang out a shingle and make a living. The Canadian government, through CIDA, got involved in training lawyers, and one might ask what would be the reason for that? The reason quite simply was that if we were to open up eastern Europe as a potential market for Canadian companies, then we needed a system and a legal framework there that would minimize risk to Canadian companies.

When I started working on that project I thought it was a tremendously useful strategy that the Canadian government had undertaken. Someone mentioned earlier a simple phrase that rings true: the Canadian development assistance strategy is one where we would rather teach someone to fish as opposed to giving them a fish. As for people who try to suggest in my presence that Canadian foreign aid is just buckets of cash being thrown around with no accountability, I can tell members that those people have had no experience with foreign aid projects, because the accountability measures and processes that are in place are extremely tough.

We focus on prevention. We focus on capacity building. We focus on making sure that women are included in these development projects because that speaks to their sustainability. We are very concerned when looking at the root causes of poverty. One of the issues that Ethiopia faced was that with such dire poverty any cooking going on was being done through cutting down trees for fuel. The deforestation of the area around the city when the big rains would come in August was causing tremendous problems with what arid or tillable land was left. It was Canadian engineers who went over and started setting up systems of pumps for irrigation and workings and having agricultural workers out in the field talking to people about the importance of not engaging in that kind of activity.

As a final point I would also like to say that in my personal experience one of the other advantages to international assistance is that the people who are engaged in it learn just as much as the people at the other end. One of the things that Canada has been criticized for is that we are kind of an island within ourselves and it is very difficult for Canadians to travel. International assistance experiences for students, exchange programs between various universities and faculty exchange programs which CIDA funds are extremely beneficial, not only to the country we are working with but also to the Canadians who participate in these projects.

I will conclude with that point, but to underscore it I want to say that Canadians can be extremely proud, not only of the people we have employed in our international development agencies but also of the direction, the scale and scope of these projects. I absolutely agree with the motion from the Bloc. It is very timely. It is a matter of ramping up to that figure, which is also contingent on the growth of the economy. That is one of the downsides to using GDP as a measure, but I think there is a definite payback for engaging in these types of activities. I would suggest that in terms of getting a bang for our buck, Canada is one of the leading countries in making sure that the money is spent both efficiently and effectively. We can all be very proud of that.

[Questions on the Order Paper, October 29th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, October 29th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that the answer to Question No. 18 be made an order for return. This return would be tabled immediately.