House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2015, with 56% of the vote.
Main Estimates 2013-14 June 5th, 2013
Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, neighbour and colleague. We are both members of the 2000 cohort. There are only four of us left now. I thank him for his very good question.
I think that is something we would have to give a lot of thought to. I do not have a direct answer. However, obviously—
Main Estimates 2013-14 June 5th, 2013
Mr. Speaker, I do not know the answer to that. I think the Senate these days is controlled by the Conservatives.
However, one possible answer is that we in the House of Commons proceeded too rapidly, or perhaps incorrectly, and the Senate is carrying out its traditional role as the chamber of sober second thought. Or, there perhaps is a more nefarious reason.
However, I do not know the answer to that question.
Main Estimates 2013-14 June 5th, 2013
Mr. Speaker, I cannot speak for the NDP, but I can say that I am not surprised that the Bloc Québécois will support this motion.
The Bloc thinks that the only provincial government that will not be affected by the motion is Quebec's. The federal agency does not collect Quebec's taxes, but it does for all the other provinces. It would be the end of the federal government and the end of the provincial governments, except for Quebec's. It may sound like a good idea to the Bloc Québécois, but it certainly is not a good idea for Quebeckers and Canadians.
Main Estimates 2013-14 June 5th, 2013
Mr. Speaker, I do not think the NDP members are probably very happy with what I have said today. I would say in response that the Conservative record is not the greatest either, because the Prime Minister went for many months without appointing a single senator because he wanted senators to be elected. He found he could not do that, and all of a sudden he appointed a huge whack of senators, 18, including Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and so on.
He found that he could not function as a government without an effective Senate. If that silly NDP motion passed, we would find that out in spades. Both actions by the government and the proposed actions by the NDP say that under our existing Constitution, we do need the Senate to function in a workable way.
Main Estimates 2013-14 June 5th, 2013
Mr. Speaker, I am afraid my hon. colleague confuses two things. We could have a good, wholesome debate about whether or not the Senate should be abolished, whether it is worth the $90 million, whether Canadians get good value out of it, whether it should be abolished or whether it should be reformed, et cetera.
What we cannot do is simply cut off the funding and expect this federal government to continue with business as usual. As I have explained in two speeches in one day, the effect of doing that would be to cut all the civil servants out and to cut out all the operating expenditures of the government. There would be no lights on in this room or in the other chamber down the hall. Nothing would happen. All of the Senate staff would be fired. The government could not get things through the Senate. The only statutory expenditure, which the member for Winnipeg Centre mentioned, for the Senate, is the salaries of senators.
Is the NDP suggesting that the Senate should have nothing to do, but the senators should continue to be paid? Is that their idea?
Main Estimates 2013-14 June 5th, 2013
Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak again on this motion, which is similar to the motion on which I spoke earlier today.
I have several points. My main point is that it does not make any sense, because it would close down the Government of Canada and many provincial governments. In Canada's Constitution, there is a provision that laws of Canada have to be passed by both Houses of Parliament. That means that we could not vote on supply bills, on which we will be voting later tonight, that provide the money for the coming year if the Senate did not approve them.
If all of the Senate's money were taken away, the Senate would not be able to approve this legislation. As of April 1 next year, the Government of Canada would be deprived of money. It would not be deprived of statutory programs, but money for the entire public service. We would have no CRA, for example, because nobody could be employed there. What does the CRA do? It collects the taxes not only at the federal level, but for all of the provinces as well, except for Quebec. It collects income tax, corporate income tax and HST for those provinces that have it. Not only would the federal government run out of money as of April 1, nine provinces would have a huge chunk of their revenues taken away by this action.
As a result, the whole Government of Canada would grind to a halt. We must think of that. Do we want to find out what is going on through CBC? CBC gets huge subsidies, so it would not be able to continue. We would not have food inspection. We would not have all of the things that Canadians rely on. We would not even have employment insurance, OAS or things of that nature. While those monies would be protected, because they are statutory, the people to administer them would all be gone because there would be no civil service left.
If foreigners wanted to help Canada in this government-less state, they could not go to our embassies abroad because we would not have any embassies. All of the lights would be turned out in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
I am not sure the NDP has thought through how government really works. The NDP is not a party that favours zero government. If anything, the NDP is the party of big government, yet the effect of its proposal would be to eliminate government.
For these reasons, I think this is not a good message. It is not a good idea to do something that would eliminate the federal government and many of the provincial governments.
For those reasons alone, we are certainly not going to support this crazy idea.
There are other things that I would like to mention as well. I think that this is disrespectful to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is in the process of considering a long overdue reference by the federal government. We have been recommending such a reference for a year or more and the government did it just recently, thereby wasting a lot of time. Had it done it a year ago, the Supreme Court probably would have decided by now and we could proceed. It is highly disrespectful of the Supreme Court.
We have to obey our Constitution. The law says that the Senate and the House of Commons have to approve. It is not just a federal law, it is a constitutional law. It would require at least seven provinces and the federal government to change it. We have to wait before we proceed in a meaningful way to hear what the Supreme Court of Canada says.
This is also highly disrespectful towards the provinces. At least seven of the provinces, ten in certain cases, have to give approval for constitutional changes in the Senate. For the NDP to simply present a motion to starve the Senate of its funds and think that will do it does not respect provincial rights. The Senate is supposed to be a body that represents provincial interests and the provinces are central to the determination of the makeup and rules governing the Senate.
It really does not make sense to have a motion that disrespects the Supreme Court and the provinces.
The third problem is that this motion benefits the government because it is a debate about the Senate and the government does not mind that. The government quite likes that. The government has no problems with that. What the government does not want to do is to debate the role of the Prime Minister and the role of the Prime Minister's Office in the transfer of the $90,000 by Nigel Wright to Senator Duffy. A motion that dealt with that, like calling for documents on this transfer of funds, would have been much more interesting from an opposition party's point of view than a harmless debate about the Senate. A debate about the Senate right now is not really useful before we hear from the Supreme Court as to what we are allowed to do. We will not hear from the Supreme Court for some time.
Lastly, it has been erroneously stated that Liberals are for the status quo in the Senate. That is not at all true. I would like to describe what our democratic critic, the former leader of the Liberal Party, the hon. member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, thinks about Senate reform.
First of all, we have to recognize that the distribution of Senate seats is highly unbalanced. Alberta and British Columbia have six seats each. New Brunswick has 10, so the original provinces, the Maritimes, and Quebec and Ontario hugely benefit in the distribution of seats compared with Alberta and British Columbia. If we move to an elected Senate, that means that the Senate would become more powerful. It might become as powerful as the House of Commons. If that were to happen, it would be hugely unfair to British Columbia and Alberta, so I do not know what the Prime Minister is trying to do with his proposed elected senators, without any return to the Constitution and without talking about the distribution of Senate seats. The Prime Minister comes from Alberta. He would be disadvantaging his own province whose proportion in the Senate is far less than its proportion of the population of Canada.
My colleague said that the first thing one would have to do to move toward an elected Senate would be to have a negotiation involving the distribution of Senate seats to make it fairer and more in line with today's population. If one could achieve that, then one could move constitutionally toward an elected Senate. He also said we would have to have some division of interests, so that the Senate and the House of Commons would be complementary in their activities rather than being a recipe for deadlock between the two. We see in the United States and perhaps in Italy that the House of Representatives and the Senate cannot agree and there is a deadlock. We want to avoid that.
It is a complicated business. That is one approach that could be taken, which my colleague thinks is a good idea and which I think might be a good idea, but we should not underestimate the difficulty of that approach as we know from our own history. It is at least a principled approach to Senate reform, as opposed to this proposal that we have today of starving it of funds, which is a recipe not only for shutting down the Senate, but for shutting down the whole Government of Canada and the governments of many provinces as well.
In closing, my main argument is that this approach by the NDP does not make sense because the NDP is a party that favours government. It does not make sense to eliminate the government if you are in favour of government, but their proposal would do exactly that: eliminate the federal government and many of the provincial governments.
This does not jibe with the Constitution or the Supreme Court. It is absolutely not the right approach.
What it does show is that the NDP is certainly not ready for government. I would think the most principled action by the more sensible members of Parliament for the NDP would be to vote against their own crazy motion.
Main Estimates 2013-14 June 5th, 2013
Mr. Speaker, I apologize, but I want to be clear. I was not referring to the member with that adjective but rather to his motion. Shall we say, “foolish”, or “not a good motion”?
I wonder if the member understands that according to Canada's Constitution, every bill, including supply bills, in order to become law, must be passed by both Houses of Parliament. If the Senate no longer exists, these laws cannot be passed, which would mean that, as of April 1 of next year, the federal government would shut down. There would be no more civil servants, and similarly, since the CRA collects the taxes for most provinces, many of the provinces would have to shut down. Is this a sensible idea?
Main Estimates 2013-14 June 5th, 2013
Mr. Speaker, I like the member for Winnipeg Centre. He is chair of our committee. I would say that we are friends, but we do not necessarily agree on everything. I would characterize his motion and the NDP motion of today as nothing less than idiotic, and that is being generous—
Business of Supply June 5th, 2013
Mr. Speaker, I agree with what my colleague said. However, I also think that the government's current plan is not serious. It is also trying to do things through the back door by avoiding the Constitution.
If we have an elected Senate, which is what the government wants, but we have no change in the distribution of seats, it would be grossly unfair to British Columbia and Alberta, which only have 6 seats each versus New Brunswick, which has 10, P.E.I., which has 4, and so on. If we are going to have an elected Senate which is more powerful, we have to first deal with the distribution of the seats. The current government appears not to be willing to do that.
However, again, we will have to see what the Supreme Court says.
Business of Supply June 5th, 2013
Mr. Speaker, what is completely unacceptable is the NDP's ridiculous motion. The NDP should know that there are certain rules. We have a Constitution and we must abide by it. We have no choice. We will have to wait for the Supreme Court decision to find out the details. However, most experts believe that the consent of all the provinces and the federal government is needed to abolish the Senate. It cannot be done with just an NDP motion. It would take the approval of at least the majority of the provinces, if not all of them.