Paul Dewar

[Foreign Affairs, March 7th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, Conservatives have a plan to start buying and selling properties in London. They claim it is to save money, but now we learn that DFAIT cannot guarantee we would even save a nickel.

What we are seeing here is a plan by the government to actually sell off one of Canada's real estate jewels, and at the same time spend $108 million to buy a new High Commission.

My simple question to the minister: Will he abandon his reckless plan to play around in the London real estate market?

[Business of Supply, March 5th, 2013]

Yes, Mr. Speaker, I do think members, regardless of their party affiliation, represent P.E.I. in a responsible way. I might not always agree with them, but I would not want to take seats away from P.E.I., as the member is suggesting. That would not be helpful.

It is important to make sure there is clarity and purpose here. The Senate is an unelected body. The government has failed in trying to reform it, so let us acknowledge that and abolish it.

[Business of Supply, March 5th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for bringing that up, because there are still some in the House who were elected under the Reform Party banner. I even remember the ridicule that was placed upon the Senate at the time, the mariachi bands and all sorts of fanfare. In essence, those members came to Ottawa to clean it up, to bring in a new way of doing things with the Senate, and all we have seen are half measures that do not work. Ultimately, they failed.

I have not talked to Preston Manning recently, but I think he would acknowledge his disappointment or say he has given up on the project entirely. I would suspect that, if I were to have a coffee with him, he would suggest that abolition is the only way to go.

We cannot have a Senate with a primary mandate, because it would undermine the legitimacy of the House of Commons. I do not know of a place with a bicameral system that would afford the same powers, in a Westminster model that functions well and is democratic.

[Business of Supply, March 5th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I would start with surprise. What we hear from leaders in provincial capitals is more about abolition. We hear it from Saskatchewan to Ontario to other parts of the country. The point of having consultation with the provinces obviously has to do with how we do this. That is the first important step. The member is speculating on what the answer would be. What we have heard so far is that many of the premiers, either past or present, believe that right now the only way to deal with this is abolition.

[Business of Supply, March 5th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I should mention at the beginning of my intervention that I will be sharing my time with the member for Vancouver Kingsway.

I really looked forward to this debate today, because as we know, it has been an ongoing debate since the beginning of our discussions about Confederation, going back to the 1800s. If members will recall, and there has been some mention by previous speakers, when we actually talked about an upper house, it was at a very different time.

One of the guiding principles in our Constitution, which guides us here in this place, is the notion of peace, order and good government. That idea was to help guide us in what we do. If members will recall, at the time peace, order and good government was actually contemplated, it was to ensure that we were going to be responsible in how we governed our country, our nascent country, at the time. If we are going to have this guiding principle of peace, order and good government work, it has to be tied to the notion of responsible government.

Inherent in the guiding principles of the Constitution is that each of us, as elected representatives representing our constituents, after having been duly elected, would come to this place and look for a group of people in this place to gain the confidence of the rest of the people in this place. That is basically how it works here. Elected people come here and organize themselves in such a way that one group, and we do it through political parties, gains the confidence of the rest of the House. They choose one person to be the first among equals and that person becomes our prime minister.

That is important to go over, because that is the notion of responsible government. We actually have the writ given to us by citizens. It is the notion that we actually have legitimacy given to us by our electors. That was something that was near and dear to the founders of Confederation. Going back to the conferences in Charlottetown and subsequently Quebec City, in 1864, the whole debate around the Senate took the most time. They were the most intense debates, certainly around the numbers, as we heard from my colleague. Should all provinces be given the same representation in the Senate?

There was actually another Macdonald, not Sir John A. Macdonald but Andrew Macdonald, from P.E.I., who said that we should fashion ourselves like the Americans and give each province the same number of senators. Of course, that did not fly. What we ended up with was based on regions, which we have already heard. In that case of the Maritimes, they would be equal to the other partners in Confederation. That was because we were looking at a very different setup. We were looking at provinces that were not fully vested with powers. They were not fully vested with what the provinces have been given through negotiations, constitutional debates and agreements over the years, such as oversight of natural resources and different revenue streams. These are all things provinces now have. That did not occur before. In 1864, it was the concern of the smaller provinces that they were going to have a voice.

Let us be clear. No one, during those debates, believed that the upper house, the way it was concocted, was a virtue. It was a compromise they had to have to get the Constitution agreed to.

Think of George Brown, the original reformer. George Brown, founder of The Globe and Mail, agreed to an appointed house at the time, simply because he did not want to give it legitimacy to challenge this House. I think that is important to acknowledge, because when we look back at the Reform Party of more recent times, it had this notion that we could just elect them and they would be equal. If we had that, we would have George Brown's worst nightmare; that is, we would have a lower house, with more legitimate representation, being challenged by the upper house.

Right now, both houses have primary mandates. That means that we are given the same powers, not through convention but by way of the Constitution.

The problem we have on this side is that we have to catch up with the times. Provinces now have strong constitutional responsibilities and revenues. The concerns that existed back in Quebec and Charlottetown in 1864, when we were discussing, debating and looking at putting Canada together, are not the same concerns we have now.

If we ask any of our constituents who their senators are, we would get a question mark. Some of them might know them now, because they have been in the press recently, but that is not the same thing. That is the controversy of the day. Ask them if they ever ask their senators to do anything and if they represent them. I think we would get a puzzled response. They would probably say that they are not aware of who their senators are and that they have never contacted them. That is important, because if we are talking about responsible government in 2013, it has to be based on the legitimacy that this House and the house next to us is given by citizens.

The house next to us is appointed by the government of the day. It is not elected by citizens. I am sorry to say, and I hate to put a damper on the government's attempt to come up with a quasi-legitimate process, that it just does not work. It does not work, because the essence of this is that we cannot have a selection process that can be ignored by the Prime Minister, because that is unconstitutional. The Prime Minister could easily ignore, and has in the past, the options given to him or her under the selection process at the provincial level.

Finally, it comes down to what Brown's point was. There cannot be a body that is not represented as thoroughly as this House challenging this House.

What do we need to do? It is clear that we need to abolish the Senate, not just because it does not belong in its current state but because we do not need it any more. The committee work is something we should actually be doing a better job of here. They should be given more resources here. The Library of Parliament should be given more resources to enable our committees to be as strong as what we see south of the border and in other jurisdictions.

I am told that the Senate provides an opportunity for people to have oversight in terms of the government of the day. We have, and I know my colleague from Toronto—Danforth has, many solid ideas on how we can reform affairs. That can be done.

At the end of the day, what we need to do is abolish the Senate. For those who wish to come up with something else, that will not happen until we start afresh. Those who want to come up with another construction of the Senate need to acknowledge that we have to abolish the existing Senate. If we are to adhere to that notion of peace, order and good government, of responsible government and what John Stuart Mill referred to, back in 1861, when he wrote that it is only from the people that governments receive their right to govern, then in 2013, we can no longer play this game and say that we have a legitimate body next to us. We have to acknowledge that it is no longer acceptable to have laws passed here killed in the house next to us.

The people who vote for us expect us to represent their interests. When people are appointed by the government of the day, that not only undermines our ability to do our jobs, it undermines democracy and responsible government. That is the critical piece.

As my colleague said before, it is not about the people over there, although some of them need to be more accountable. It is about the construct of the Senate in 2013.

I will just finish by saying this. When peace, order and good government was given to us, it meant that it was connected to responsible government. As long as we have an unelected and unaccountable Senate next to us, we do not have responsible government in this country.

[Foreign Affairs, March 1st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, despite a recent report saying that the fund is essential for Canada's ability to respond to global crises, the budget for the global peace and security fund is cut completely. Even the Glyn Berry program, named in memory of a diplomat who gave his life for our country, has been axed by the Conservatives.

It is a Canadian value to do our part around the world, so why is the minister cutting programs that get results?

[Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act, February 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the member mentioned Mr. O'Connor. The other person we should be listening to is Paul Kennedy. He was the one who recommended many things that the government should do to reform the RCMP.

Paul Kennedy, after having spent much time trying to deal with things internally in the RCMP and the complaints commission process, said it had to be outside the RCMP, that it had to be civilian oversight. He said that the legislation this one is based on, Bill C-42, which is a reiteration of Bill C-38, “is so riddled with loopholes it doesn't meet O'Connor's standard”.

Could he comment on Mr. Kennedy's comments about this legislation?

[Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act, February 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, we train a lot of police overseas. In the past, we have trained police in Kosovo, and we look at what is happening in Afghanistan.

One thing that is fundamental when training police is that the police have to understand that they have a responsibility to the people they protect. There has to be accountability within the police service. To do that, we often push for a lot of training and education on sensitivity. When it comes to sexual harassment and the use of power within the ranks by those who are in senior positions, we have to be vigilant to ensure that there is not an abuse of power. What we put forward as amendments to the bill was to have that accountability in there. It is not good enough to have these prescriptive pieces of legislation: we have to back them up with something. We put that forward in amendments, as my colleague described.

I wonder if my colleague could provide her perspective on the need to have that embedded in our police services. It is not just a matter of having the legislation, which is fine; we also have to have that other piece. We have to ensure that we are vigilant in making sure there is accountability.

[Citizenship and Immigration, February 15th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, we are just asking for a little communication on this side.

Over 70,000 people have been killed in the Syrian war and 400,000 are living in refugee camps. As war rages, Syrian Canadians have asked the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism for a meeting hundreds of times, but the minister has stonewalled them. None of us in the House would want our families left in these conditions.

It is a simple request. Will the minister meet with representatives from the Syrian Canadian community?

[Foreign Affairs, February 15th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday the Minister of Foreign Affairs was asked directly whether the government had been asked to extend the C-17 deployment in Mali. He replied, “Not at this time”. Then yesterday, the Minister of National Defence told reporters that in fact Canada had received such a request “a few days ago”. Not consulting properly before announcing decisions is a worrying tendency by the government.

I have a very simple question. Why did the minister fail to inform the committee about this request?