Peter Milliken

[Supply, May 30th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member chastised the government for its failure to live up to what he says are its promises when he knows there is a list of enactments the House has dealt with concerning law enforcement issues, some of which he has supported and some of which he has opposed. All have been brought before the House in accordance with the promises made in the red book.

I am surprised that with a motion of this kind that does not mention law and order issues he would bring this up. This is one of the areas in which the government has been most active. It has dealt with changes in the criminal law of the country. We have changes in the criminal law itself. We have had changes in the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and so on. We have had many legislative changes in respect of young offenders. Ongoing work is being done in committee in this area as we speak.

I am surprised the hon. member raised this subject. Perhaps he did not clear it with his leader. Could the member tell us whether he is still advocating caning as a means of stamping out crime in Canada? If so, perhaps he could tell us the results of the studies he has conducted in this regard and whether he made it to Singapore to get the true facts on this subject.

[Supply, May 28th, 1996]

Or for the Conservative Party of Canada. These members are given a budget for research purposes, as we are, and they are allowed to use that money for partisan purposes, as we are permitted to do.

I can develop policy statements in my office intended for use by the Liberal Party of Canada should I choose to do so. I can use my House of Commons staff, just as the hon. member can do with his.

I cite a few examples. There is a former Reform candidate now employed in the office of a member of the Reform Party. He was employed there before he ran as a candidate. He was a candidate in cold storage. It is like a frozen steak; pull it out when there is an election and start cooking. Then when the election is lost, it is put back in the freezer. That is what happened with one of theirs.

Then the Reform Party spent $30,000 on its leader's suits with taxpayers' money raised in donations to the party. Do we think people who contributed money to the Reform Party thought that $30,000 would be used to buy suits for the hon. member for Calgary Southwest? That is accountability. Let us hear about that.

If the hon. member is so concerned about accountability why does he not tell us about the car the party provides the party leader? When he handed over the keys to the official car given to him by the House of Commons, he took a car from the party and said it was not from the taxpayers. Who got all the receipts for the money with $75 out of $100 as a tax credit but the people who paid for that car who were all taxpayers. The rest of us are all taking it in the neck because they got a $75 tax credit out of the first $100.

The hon. member says it is a taxable claim. My figures are correct. If a person gives $100 to a party they get a $75 tax credit. That comes out of the pockets of taxpayers, as does any other deduction.

I know the hon. member for Kootenay East is thankful he asked me that question. I agree with accountability. I believe people should be accountable. His party should come clean about what it is doing with taxpayers' money, as we do.

[Supply, May 28th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, of course the Senate should be held accountable for its funds. I am glad the hon. member asked this question. The article seems to be suggesting the Conservative members of the Senate were using the Senate funds available to them for research and other such purposes to do research on behalf of party policy for the Conservative Party of Canada.

[Supply, May 28th, 1996]

I am well aware that the hon. member's no side won. She had a chance then to support an elected Senate and she campaigned against the Charlottetown accord. I put my money where my mouth was. Our party supported an elected Senate despite my preference for abolition. I went along with the thing and supported an elected Senate in an effort to make the accord work. When the hon. member for Beaver River had a chance go for an elected Senate she would not hold her nose and go for it. She said "I am not going for an elected Senate, it is not that important to me".

It was important enough to our party that I was able to support the accord and I did my bit for an elected Senate. Even though we lost the battle, we won the war in Kingston and the Islands.

[Supply, May 28th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, notwithstanding the protestations of the hon. member for Beaver River, I have no intention of being hanged before or after any possible chance of going to the Senate.

To answer her question, I support the Liberal Party resolution of 1992. If I had my choice, I would abolish the Senate. I see there will be a debate on Friday on a motion moved by the hon. member for Kamouraska. I hope the hon. member for Beaver River will support the motion so we can get rid of the Senate for now. If we can agree on an elected Senate at another date, I would be to have an elected Senate. It will have to be by some kind of agreement.

I also suggest the proper thing to do is put some restrictions on the power of the Senate, whether it is elected or not. The hon.

member for Beaver River can discuss that with me at a later date. I would be more than happy to have a lengthy debate on the subject.

With respect to the Charlottetown accord, when we had a chance to have an elected Senate, I actively campaigned for the yes side.

[Supply, May 28th, 1996]

The hon. member asks what is wrong with that. In a democracy we normally go with the majority, the numbers. We have compromised the majority somewhat by tying the number of seats into the population in provinces with certain floors, certain guarantees, and so on and so forth. Those exist in the country. It is this House which is the basis for government in the country, not the Senate. It has unlimited powers in theory but in practice very limited powers. This House has virtually unlimited powers.

The hon. member knows the way this House works is that the different regions of the country are represented here. However, what is sought in this triple E Senate is a power in the smallest provinces to block the larger provinces.

Hon. members opposite must know that if about one-quarter of the population of the country were able to thwart the wishes of over three-quarters of the country there would be something wrong. If they do not think that, their idea of democracy is pretty weak.

Have I said something in a way that is too complicated for the hon. members opposite to understand?

The country should be governed by a group of people elected to represent their geographic areas based on some system of equality of representation. What hon. members opposite are suggesting is exactly the opposite. They are to turn the Senate Chamber into something that will be able to dominate the Canadian political system big time and in a way that is most undemocratic despite their protests of democracy.

It makes me very suspicious when I combine my hearing of their views on the triple E Senate with the hon. member for Calgary West's sliding into bed with these Tory senators on Bill C-69 and the hon. member for Beaver River in her enthusiasm to get a Senate seat to make up for the loss of her seat in the redistribution. All those things make me very suspicious. I begin to think that maybe I am paranoid or something. However, when I speak with my colleagues they all agree with my views as to what Reform really wants here.

If the hon. member for Calgary Southwest were here, although I am sure he is here in spirit, and if he had to act as Prime Minister I can just imagine what he would have been doing the last few weeks if he had vacancies in the Senate at his beck and call. I could see the hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan in the Senate. I could see the hon. member for Athabasca in the Senate. I will bet if she had played her cards right, the hon. member for Calgary Southeast might even have made it to the Senate. I will bet it is a good place for them. It is just as well there as it is at the back of the bus.

The poor hon. member for Calgary Southeast is now sloughed off in the back row over there with the Bloc members. The poor soul, she is off with the Bloc members. The hon. member for Mégantic-Compton-Stanstead is back after his speech and he and the hon. member for Calgary Southeast can commiserate on

what life would be like in the Senate. I am sure they would share views on the importance of appointment to the Senate and what useful lives they could lead there after the next election.

The hon. member for Calgary Southwest is not the Prime Minister of Canada and that is why we are hearing this politics of envy. If he were the Prime Minister of Canada we would not be hearing all these complaints about the Senate because there would be some Reform members in the Senate and so they would stop complaining.

It would not stop the Bloc, I admit, since it is not running to be the Government of Canada. It is unlikely that we will have any appointments from that party, which would silence it.

I assure my colleague for Mégantic-Compton-Stanstead that if the Prime Minister, once there is a Liberal majority in the Senate, chooses to appoint one of his colleagues to the Senate he too will agree the Senate is a great place, that its members work very hard and he will repent all the words he spoke today. He will withdraw those words and apologize to his friends in the Senate for the nasty things he has said.

I hope all hon. members in their remarks and in their questions will be temperate in their criticisms of the other place because I believe it does good service for Canada.

[Supply, May 28th, 1996]

The hon. member says not that many. I know he is flattering me. We could then go to another place like Ontario where the winner might receive 10 times as many votes as the person in Manitoba, Saskatchewan or some other province, but it would be many times more than Stan Waters received in Alberta.

Let us go on with this case for another second. Then we get these people into the Senate and the Senate becomes effective. It has all the powers the current Senate has, the power to block any bill. We would create a newly elected body of 10 people from every province, representing the people of their provinces, with the power to block the elected will of the House of Commons.

What happens to the democratic principle in this case? The five smallest provinces could get together and effectively block the five largest provinces because there would be a tie vote.

[Supply, May 28th, 1996]

The hon. member for Beaver River has reappeared. Like the phoenix from the ashes she has come back. I am so glad she has made it. I hope she has not missed the point of the beginning of my story.

Reformers want this triple E Senate, 10 senators per province, elected on a provincial basis so that they can all get huge numbers of votes.

The hon. member for Beaver River in her remarks spoke eloquently about how her friend, Stan Waters, got a huge number of votes, the biggest number anyone had ever received in an election in Canada, because he ran in the biggest constituency anyone had ever run in, in this popularity contest in Alberta. I can only tell the hon. member that if we had a similar election today across the country in each province, in the province of Prince Edward Island the winner might get as many votes as I did.

[Supply, May 28th, 1996]

The hon. member for Kootenay East says I am right. He knows I am right. Her seat disappears in redistribution. She wants to go to the Senate. Here she was making a speech today, wanting to create vacancies in the Senate by exposing some kind of scandal down there. If she could make it account for this $40 million and found something had been misspent, maybe there would be a vacancy and she could get appointed to the vacancy.

She listed her three friends who have all gone and she wants to be with them. I can understand her desire. I guess if I had three close friends all go to the Senate maybe I would want a Senate seat too. In the meantime I am quite happy to stay here.

I am not finished yet. I know hon. members opposite want to ask me questions and that is why I made this speech. I want to give

them an opportunity to ask me questions, but they will have to hold their horses until I am finished.

The other thing about the Senate is how is it that the Reform Party, which says it is so much in favour of democracy, can favour a triple E Senate? Why does a triple E Senate make so much sense to the Reform Party and so little sense to almost everybody else?

I will try to explain it. Under its proposal for a triple E Senate, it is to have the senators elected on a province-wide basis in each province and there will be an equal number of senators per province, say 10 per province.

[Supply, May 28th, 1996]

We were treated to the speeches of the hon. member for Beaver River all the time. She gave us another sterling example this afternoon.

We all listened with bated breath to the member for Beaver River when she got a chance to speak. I remember many times the Liberal Party gave up space in its speaking list in order for the member for Beaver River to get on the record. We wanted to hear her views. We were enthusiastic about hearing her views. We still are.

Here she was today telling us all about the Senate and how her friends had been appointed to the Senate, friends of hers she thought were in favour of a democratically elected Senate.

The position of the Liberal Party on this is very well known. We favour an elected Senate. It will come in the fullness of time. In the meantime, we operate under the existing Constitution. That requires the Prime Minister to fill vacancies in the Senate by making recommendations to His Excellency the Governor General of Canada who then summons persons to sit in the Senate.

I am sure my hon. friends opposite would not want to have the Senate continue to be dominated by the party that formed the government and that was so soundly thrashed in the last election campaign.

They say they are very democratic and that they support democratic principles. I found it passing strange that when I came into the House today I saw that the two Conservative members have been shifted away so that they are not sitting so close to the Reformers any more. We know why that happened. It is that they were treated so rudely by the Reform Party members, being shouted at and screamed at so that they could not hear themselves think where they were sitting. They got moved closer to the Bloc. For a party that is so democratic as the Reform Party, I am rather surprised it would take that approach.

Anyway, there they are moved. It is bad enough to see them mistreated in the election campaign, having been reduced to two seats, but then to have them treated this way in the House by the Reform Party is a shameful thing.

The Conservative Party still controls the Senate; well not quite anymore, but it still has a very large number of members in the Senate. Until recently it exercised effective control of the Senate. I am sure hon. members opposite who are after all professed democrats would not want that to continue.

The government has continued to appoint Liberals to the Senate to redress the imbalance that was the hangover of the Mulroney years in the Senate. It was a hangover that Canadians were tired of. The government took the right approach. It has continued with that approach by appointing Liberals to the Senate to fill every possible vacancy to make sure we are not confronted with Tory dominance in the Senate any longer.

Some of my colleagues may not be aware of this but hon. members opposite have been in cahoots with their Tory colleagues in the Senate Chamber. I go back to Bill C-69 and that ill fated attempt to amend the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act which was introduced in the House and which members on all sides worked on so hard to come up with a good bill.

That bill was adopted in this House and sent to the other place. I recall going down to a committee meeting to answer questions about the bill as chairman of the procedure and House affairs committee as parliamentary secretary to the government House leader at the time. I went down to the Senate to answer questions with regard to the bill. Who did I see down there but the hon. member for Calgary West. He had run down and climbed into bed with Senator Staunton and Senator Murray. He was in cahoots. He was whispering away at the committee table, saying "ask him this, ask him about that", and giving all kinds of asides to these senators to stir up trouble with respect to a bill that had passed in this House.

This is the Senate that we are hearing about today which is so undemocratic, autocratic, so unfair and full of all these awful people, according to the Reform Party and the Bloc Quebecois. Yet when Bill C-69 was there, boy, there was the member for Calgary West, who the last time I checked was still in the Reform Party, down there talking those Tory senators and trying to get them to jump on the Reform band wagon and block the bill. They succeeded. He succeeded abundantly. He so convinced the Tory senators that this bill was a bad thing that they blocked the bill. They held it up for months and months. Now the hon. member for Beaver River is losing her seat.

We heard the member for Beaver River today. She was preaching politics of envy. She wants a Senate seat.