Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege of speaking to my colleague's motion to reduce the estimates of the Senate by some $10 million.
The member for Comox-Alberni spoke very eloquently regarding the Senate. He gave us a lot of facts and he also told about the unaccountability of the Senate. I too will touch on the unaccountability but I want to talk a little about some principles and some attitudes as well as accountability with regard to this matter.
First of all, whose money are we talking about? If we look at the estimates, it says $40.700-some for the Senate. Someone might say that this is the Senate's money. It is not the Senate's money. It is Canadians' money because these are taxpayers' dollars. Some of that money is yours and mine and the other 29 million Canadians who support the Senate through their tax contributions.
We are talking about reducing spending by the Senate by $10 million in this motion. That $10 million is not the Senate's dollars. We are not taking $10 million from the Senate. What we are doing is talking about how we are going to spend $10 million of taxpayers' money.
In Kindersley-Lloydminster, if someone is speaking to a group or to an individual and wants to draw a laugh, start talking about the Senate. That is the esteem in which the Senate is held by average Canadians. We are spending $40 million for something about which Canadians do not think very highly. The attitude of Canadians is that the Senate, in the form in which it now exists, is not a very good investment.
I can guarantee that if someone surveyed Canadians from one end of this country to another and if they had any criticism of this motion, they would say that they are not reducing the Senate's spending by enough. Ten million dollars is pretty modest. After all, that is our money and we think it could be put to better use.
I think of my own riding of Kindersley-Lloydminster. How could that money be used in Kindersley-Lloydminster? Because of health care funding cuts, hospital have been closed in the Kindersley-Lloydminster constituency. It means that while there are still some good health care facilities available, some people might not get there on time. Lives may actually be lost because of the health care cuts experienced in Kindersley-Lloydminster.
I also have a stretch of the Yellowhead highway that goes through my constituency near Lloydminster and also near Saskatoon. A lot of that highway is still two-way traffic. It is one of the major transportation arteries across this country. Funding in part to upgrade that highway is a federal responsibility. There has been talk and commitments of upgrading the Yellowhead highway.
I know the constituents in the Lloydminster area would much rather see this $10 million go into highway construction on the Yellowhead than see an unaccountable Senate spending those dollars on what we know not.
The concern of Canadians is why would they fund something for which they have no respect? Our concern should be then, what do we do about it? Immediately, what we can do is reduce their funding. There are some longer term things that need to be done. My colleague from Comox-Alberni has touched on that.
Certainly he has tried to initiate some accountability from the Senate and I appreciate his endeavour. He requested the Senate to appear before this House and account for how those dollars are spent. It was not a very threatening request. It was fairly civil and fairly reasonable, in fact very reasonable and very important. It was an opportunity for the Senate to justify the way it has been spending tax dollars but it ignored his request. That tells us a bit about the attitude of the Senate itself. Canadians' attitude may not be good toward the Senate but it is reciprocated by the Senate, which has a very low opinion of Canadians and of its role in accounting for the money that it spends.
There is a difference between this House and the other place. In this House we are held accountable. We can hold one another accountable in debates and so on and how we vote on legislation, but there is that accountability that comes at election time.
One of our colleagues actually wrote a letter to the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix which is published in today's edition and it is absolutely wrong. This member for Saskatoon-Humboldt said: ``In June I spoke in the House of Commons in opposition to a Reform Party motion aimed at the destruction of the Canadian Wheat Board''. People who read Hansard could look there and they would not find one word by one Reformer who ever called or indicated any aim of ours to destroy the Canadian Wheat Board. We talked about reforms to the board, improving the board and the long term viability of the board but in no case did we ever talk about the destruction of the board. In fact we said that is not what we want to accomplish.
The member for Saskatoon-Humboldt can be held accountable. We can talk to her constituents and they have an opportunity at the next election not to vote for her if she was wrong on this issue, which she was, and in other areas in which she may be wrong.
That is not the case with senators. They are not accountable. They are patronage appointments. Once they have that seat in the other place they are pretty comfortable. They can pretty well do whatever they want. They can make statements that are rather ridiculous like the statement made by the member for Saskatoon-Humboldt and nobody can challenge them. Canadians have no way to hold them accountable. They do not have to be answerable for their actions, for their words and for their deeds.
Everyone in this House would agree that is not a very healthy situation. We need to bring more accountability to the Senate. Perhaps if we vote them $10 million less of Canadian taxpayers' dollars to spend it will wake them up. Some of my Bloc colleagues have been talking about them sleeping. Sometimes when you take some money out of your back pocket it wakes you up if you are sleeping and that is what this motion intends to do.
We have on record Liberal promises to the effect that the Liberal Party, if it was in government, would reform the Senate. There are more broken promises. We have a promise from the Prime Minister that he is committed to an elected Senate. He has not kept that promise which is one of many that the Liberals have broken. We wonder how much longer Canadians will let the Liberals get away with making promises that they have absolutely no intention of fulfilling.
We do not even need a constitutional change to invite the provinces to elect senators. We have already had one elected Senator in this place, Senator Stan Waters, who has since passed away. He was elected by the people of Alberta and the then prime minister appointed an elected person to the Senate. It seems funny to appoint an elected person, but because of our Constitution that is the only way it can be done. A long term project would be to fix that process.
As the House knows, I am a committed supporter of the triple E concept. I want to see an elected, an effective and an equal Senate. It is certainly very important to the people of Saskatchewan. For the Liberals, as I said, who promised an elected Senate we just have to look at the record. Since they took office in the fall of 1993 they have appointed 18 Senators and most of them for a very partisan activity.
It is very interesting for me because I am the agriculture critic that one of the senators is Eugene Whelan who has a long history of being involved in agriculture. He was appointed on August 9. It would be great to have someone who is a voice for agriculture in the Senate if they were accountable. If farmers could say: "We want you to vote this way and if you don't, we don't want you in the Senate any more". Of course Mr. Whelan is in there until he is 75 years of age. The farmers have no way of removing Mr. Whelan from the Senate should he not represent their interests in the Senate.
Mr. Whelan is from Ontario and so he should be representing the interests of Ontario farmers; the corn producers, soybean producers and the milk producers. However, Mr. Whelan can just support the Liberal agenda no matter whether it is good for the farmers of Ontario or not. That is extremely unfortunate. I do really think that when one makes a promise it is extremely important to keep it.
We talked about the attitude of Canadians toward the Senate. Canadians have an attitude toward us in this place as well. We had better be on our toes and perform for Canadians, or the attitude or esteem they hold us in may not be much better than the attitude or esteem they have for the Senate. The one way to build up people's confidence and trust is to keep one's promises.
In the red book the Liberals criticized the Conservative practice of choosing political friends when making thousands of appointments to boards, commissions and agencies that cabinet is required by law to carry out. They also campaigned on integrity in government, patronage appointments and lack of accountability in the Senate. They have clearly broken these promises.
I quote from the Prime Minister. In October 1990 in the province of Alberta, out west where there is real call for Senate reform, he spoke to the federal Liberal Party and said that in two years the Liberal government would make it elected. Obviously the Liberals were in opposition then so we have to understand that he meant two years after the Liberals formed the government. I think that is fair to say.
Let us look at when the Liberals formed the government. It was in October 1993. A little simple math tells us that two years later would be October 1995, which is almost one year ago, and this promise has not been kept. There is not even the slightest indication in the throne speech that the Prime Minister intended to keep his promise. There have been no words from members on the other side that the Liberals intended to keep this promise. What are we to conclude but that he never meant it. It is another broken promise.
In 1991 the Prime Minister changed a bit. He said that he would propose a 2E and a 1R Senate: elected, effective and representative of the regions. This is not what we called for but it is an improvement. We would look for the Liberals to do what they usually do, and that is a half-baked job. They have not even done that.
It is time to conclude my presentation. I certainly support the motion to reduce spending in the Senate by a mere $10 million. I could have supported more. To wake senators up perhaps we need to make them a bit hungry. If they were a bit hungry they would not be going to sleep over there. In fact they might be a little more interested in reforming themselves. They might be a little more interested in coming over here and accounting for tax dollars they are spending, which would make Canadians feel a whole lot better.
