Peter Stoffer

[Fair Representation Act, December 9th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, we have an opportunity to put this bill into the closet and come up with a new one. The government should work with the opposition parties and with everybody else in the country and truly develop a House that is reflective of Canadian society. If the government were prepared to do that, I think it would find willing participants in the Liberal Party, the Bloc, the NDP, the Green Party, whomever. Members will find Canadians very receptive to the fact that they will have a true opportunity to discuss this. Right now, all we are getting is 30 more seats, regardless of what the government of the day is.

As long as we have an undemocratic institution in the other place, it will not have been dealt with. Senate reform or Senate abolishment would be nice. If they want true democracy, they have to be accountable and representative of the people they represent. The bill does not do that. It is just a stop-gap measure. I can assure members that if it passes, and with their majority it probably will, in five, six or seven years we will be back at it again and we will have more seats added, according to the logic of the Conservatives.

Why do we not do it right? Why do we not get rid of the first past the post system, bring in proportional representation, abolish the Senate. If we cannot abolish it, because the provinces want to keep it, then make it truly independent of government so it is not beholding to the powers of the Prime Minister and his cabinet. That would be true democratic reform.

Then we will see more young people voting. Then we will see more women wanting to get involved in politics. Then we will see more visible minorities, people with disabilities and more aboriginal people. If we are able to do that, then we would leave a legacy for the next generation of people and maybe our pictures would be in the Hall of Honour for building a new country.

[Fair Representation Act, December 9th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, I give the government credit for acknowledging the fact that there is a democratic deficit in the country in terms of seats. However, the Conservatives talking about a democratic deficit is like me saying I do not like donuts. The Conservative Party is the most anti-democratic party I have witnessed in my 14 and a half years here.

We had legislation, passed by a majority of the House of Commons, and sent to an unelected body of party principals, I guess that is the most polite way to say it. What happened? The Senate killed the bill without a word of debate. Yet what do the Conservatives want to do for democratic reform? They want to add more seats.

Let us follow the logic of the Minister of State for Democratic Reform and his Conservative Party. He says that because B.C., Alberta and Ontario have more people now, they need more seats. Of 34 million people, they want to add another 30 MPs. The United States has over 300 million people and it has 650 or 670 representatives. If we follow his logic, if we had over 300 million people, there would be over 3,000 of us in this place. I do not know how big his apartment is, but he would not have a place to stay. That is problem one in their logic.

Problem two is this. The minister, in his question for my colleague, the member for Scarborough—Rouge River, said that if we were to do anything else, we would have to open up the Constitution for debate. Bring it on. The only way we can have true democratic representation in the House of Commons is to have debate with the provinces and territories.

This is the lazy person's way of doing it. The Conservatives just looked at the three provinces and said that since they had more of a population, they should have more seats. Also, they want to hurry the bill because they claim that if we do not, we will not get it done in time for the Elections Canada people need to redistribute the ridings and everything else that goes with that. Why is this all of a sudden the most pressing issue facing our country, to put 30 more politicians in the House of Commons?

I have great respect for the Minister of State for Democratic Reform. However, I have yet to get one email, one phone call, one letter, one fax or one comment anyone in a store or mall telling me that we should increase the number of members of Parliament in the House of Commons.

The government is correct though. When some MPs represent 39,000 people and others represent 150,000 people, that is wrong. That is an imbalance and it needs to be fixed. However, this bill does not fix it. Therefore, why not have true nation building?

In a great room just across the hall, there is a great picture of the Fathers of Confederation. There was a good man once, Sir John A. Macdonald. He participated in nation building. The Conservative government is not nation building; it is dividing the country.

Atlantic Canada will lose its weight of representation, as will Quebec, rural Canada and the north. The bill does nothing to bring more women to politics. It does nothing to bring more aboriginal people to politics. This does nothing for people with disabilities, the youth, or new immigrants.

The face of Canada is changing quite rapidly. The bill does not address any of those issues. All it does is recognize that three provinces have more people, so they should have more seats and we have to do it right away.

If the Conservatives truly want to nation-build, let us talk to the provinces, the municipalities and Canadians about what they think is fair representation. We in the NDP have two words that will really help our country: proportional representation.

We should think about this. The Green Party of Canada, with great respect to it, gets 4% or 5% of the national vote and gets one seat. The Conservative Party gets 38% of the vote, 55% of the seats, but has 100% of the power. Yet 62% of the voting people said “no” to that agenda. Therefore, what we have is a stable opposition majority.

I remember very clearly certain members sitting in the House complaining about the Liberals when they only received 36% of the national vote. They had 177 seats, but 100% of the power.

However, we do not have to play those games. We do not have to divide and conquer or pick winners and losers. Everybody in Canada should win with fair representation and with proportional representation. We are one of the few western democracies without proportional representation.

The first past the post system is a failure. This is why so many Canadians refuse to exercise their most democratic right. The Conservatives can put 30 or 100 more MPs in here and they will not increase the voter turnout in our country. The way to do it is through proportional representation, to encourage all Canadians, whether they vote the Green Party in Charlottetown, or the NDP in B.C., or Conservative in Saskatchewan, or the Bloc Québécois in Quebec or whatever, to vote and know that their vote actually matters, that their vote will have a say in the general overall numbers. Right now, it does not.

If the Conservatives want true nation-building, open up the entire discussion. This is a small, stop-gap measure. That is all it is. They have missed the opportunity, but it is not too late. There is no rush here. Canadians are not storming the Bastille saying that they need to have this by Christmas. I do not even think many people in the minister's riding are storming his office saying that he has to drop everything, that he should forget about food banks, homeless people, unemployed workers, businesses, the environment, that this is the number one issue facing Canadians. It is simply nonsense. We have lots of time for nation-building, but the only way we will to do it is if we co-operate with the provinces, municipalities, aboriginal groups and the territories to truly make the House of Commons what it should be, a reflection of Canadian society.

Why do we not have 50% representation of women in this place? The bill does not address that. Why do we have so few aboriginal people in this place? This does not address that.

[Minister of State for Education Act, December 9th, 2011]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-382, An Act respecting the appointment of a Minister of State (Education).

Mr. Speaker, the reason I am introducing this legislation is that over the 14 years I have been here, many groups, including the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, the Canadian Federation of Students, various college associations and university groups have come to Ottawa, but they have not had a specific minister with whom to discuss their educational concerns.

We have a Minister of State for Sport, a Minister of State for Transport, a Minister of State for Agriculture, and a Minister of State for Finance, but we do not have a minister of state for education. Even though education is a provincial jurisdiction, I believe a minister of state for education could summarize the concerns of all educators, colleges and universities in this country in order to facilitate best practices working with the provinces and territories to address the educational concerns for the 21st century.

I would hope that all members of Parliament would permit the speedy passage of this very important legislation. I thank the hon. member for Davenport for seconding the bill.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Points of Order, December 9th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. We hear constantly from the Minister of State for Finance regarding the so-called $3,000 tax break for the average Canadian family.

I wonder if the Minister of State for Finance would like to table the document showing that amount.

[Fair Representation Act, December 9th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I am always amazed when members stand up in the House of Commons and think they truly believe what they are saying but need to read the entire speech.

I want to offer a couple of analogies for the member. He talks about representation by population. The United States has over 300 million people and I think it is represented by about 660 representatives in the Senate, the House of Representatives and their executive. If we go by its theory, if we have 300 million people in Canada, is the member saying that we should have over 3,000 members of Parliament?

I would remind the hon. member, for whom I have great respect, that ever since the debate started I have not received one email, phone call, letter or fax, and have not been stopped once in the mall or at a store where people were saying “Please, Peter, please give us more members of Parliament. This is really what we want.”

However, I will not argue the point. The member says that some ridings are disjointed. There is no question about that. When a riding in Prince Edward Island has 39,000 people and another one has 170,000 people, that is incorrect and it needs to be fixed. The member is absolutely correct.

However, to really fix this problem there are two flies in your ointment of the argument that you are presenting. One is that historically, when Canada came together, Quebec was assured a certain percentage of the seats in Canada. This bill would diminish Quebec's standing in Canada, as well as Atlantic Canada's standing. When we look at the percentages—

[Senate Reform Act, November 22nd, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, it shows that the government is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of Canadians, yet the taxpayers are going to have to pay for this. Those individual provinces that decide to go into this scheme, which is really like a Ponzi scheme, will end up paying for something that at the end of day they will not get value for their money. It is quite clear that the prime minister of the day, whichever party, will decide who sits in the Senate. That has to stop.

[Senate Reform Act, November 22nd, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, he is right. Let us think about all the money we are wasting right now on this topic when, at the end of the day, we are going to end up back in the same place we started, with a non-elected, non-responsible, non-accountable, self-appointed friends of the Prime Minister Senate.

The reality is we do not have to do that. The government could introduce legislation that I am sure, and I cannot speak for the Liberals or the Green Party, we would definitely support. It could be one line “abolish the Senate”. If that were brought forward, we would give it passage right through the committee, right on to second reading and onward.

If the government cannot do that, we have ways of vastly improving the legislation to the point where the senators are not an extension of the long arm of the government.

[Senate Reform Act, November 22nd, 2011]

Madam Speaker, the member from the Green Party is one of the finest people in our country and well-deserved of the Order of Canada.

Both she and I have been around union contracts for a long time and we know what those weasel words actually mean. At the end of the day, no matter what comes out of this, the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister alone, will have the final say on who sits in that chamber. Those are the facts, the truth and Canadians should know this. It does not matter what is done. The process is a sham. At the end of the day, one person determines who gets to sit in the chamber. I guarantee members it will be payback time for an awful lot of people who helped that man out.

[Senate Reform Act, November 22nd, 2011]

Sorry,1997.

I remember when the Reform Party or Canadian Alliance was against the Senate. It wanted a triple-E Senate. That is all gone now. It is finished when the husband of a sitting cabinet minister can be put into the Senate, along with a fundraiser.

This one is beautiful. This one I really love. Fabian Manning--and do not get me wrong, he is a really nice guy, a decent guy--ran in an election and won. He became a member of Parliament. When he ran In the next election, he lost. The Conservatives said, “Don't worry, Mr. Manning, we have a seat for you in the Senate”. The constituents said they did not want him to represent them anymore. However, the Prime Minister said there was a seat for him in the Senate.

About a year or two later, Mr. Manning did the honourable thing and quit. He said he should be an elected member in the House of Commons. That was a very honourable thing for him to do and it was pretty risky too. He ran in the 2011 election and was defeated again. Even though he had quit the Senate, the Conservatives have a revolving door at the Senate, and invited him back in at $130,000 a year. He was twice defeated, not elected by the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, in the Avalon Peninsula, and was twice put in the Senate.

The Conservatives talk about Senate reform. It is an embarrassment to the country. Our democratic rights and principles make us a laughing stock. It is unbelievable that the Conservatives can hide behind this Senate bill, which is a sham.

Here is a novel idea: we could abolish it. Ten provinces and three territories operate their jurisdictions very well with one operating democratic body. Bring in proportional representation and have a true census of the vote. If we did that, my hon. colleague from the Green Party, sitting in my old seat 309, would probably have three or four more of her people here. That would be true representation of the popular vote.

We should not forget that even though the Conservatives got 38% of the voting public, 40% of eligible voters did not vote at all. Therefore, how many voters in Canada actually voted for those folks? A lot less than 38% when we consider the number of eligible voters out there.

If we were to bring in true proportional representation, we would have a true say in the House of Commons, reflective of Canadian society. We could do away with the Senate. However, if for whatever reason, the provinces were to say there had to be a Senate, and this is the if--I am a flexible kind of guy; some people call me Gumby--why do we not make the Senate truly independent of government? That would mean it would no longer caucus with the government. Senators would no longer be appointed by the government but by a panel of experts.

We should make the Senate completely independent so that we can get the best of the best and have it independent of Parliament. That way senators would not be beholden, or rubber-stamping legislation, or breaking election laws and having a plea bargain deal, paying the $52,000 and wiping their hands of it. We do not need that from the Senate. It happened.

This is what we get and it is an embarrassment. If we in the NDP were in government and the Conservatives were on this side, they would be standing up screaming at the top of their lungs about the bastions of power, the democratic withdrawal from this country, and shame on the New Democrats for doing that. That is precisely what they are doing. They think they can get away with it. Of course, with their smug majority and their dingwalling efforts, that arrogance is going to come back to haunt them.

My colleague from Calgary and I have been here the same amount of time and he knows what arrogance does to a front bench and what it does to the backbench. If the Conservatives think this arrogant piece of legislation is going to pull the wool over anyone's eyes, and no offence to the sheep out there, it is simply not going to work.

I ask the government to withdraw this bill, to get rid of it. We could save $100 million a year by abolishing the Senate. I mean no offence to the good people over there. I have said many times I have not met an MP or senator that I would not want as my neighbour. They are all decent people, but the chamber itself is a prehistoric institution and is no longer required. That would save us $100 million a year. What could we do with that kind of money? That is a debatable question.

The Prime Minister, with the economic action plan, appointed 27 senators in one year. Over 20 years, the cost will be $100 million. That is the economic action plan right next door for all their friends and neighbours.

[Senate Reform Act, November 22nd, 2011]

Madam Speaker, I do not know if I am really that proud to rise today on the debate of Senate reform because we are not getting Senate reform at all. We are getting Senate stay as it is with a few changes behind the cloak and dagger of what is perceived as Senate reform.

Let me get this straight for the people watching. Only the Conservatives can come up with this. We are going to make the provinces pay for elections. By the way, 40% of people do not vote in a federal election now. I cannot imagine the percentage of people who would love to vote in a Senate election.

Let me get this straight. We would get wonderful people, put their names forward for a Senate election and make the provinces pay for it. For example, if Mr. Smith was elected to be the senator from Nova Scotia, the Prime Minister could say, “No. We don't like that Mr. Smith, the elected person from Nova Scotia. We'll pick someone else.”

Folks will have to help me out with this because I really am missing the so-called democratic reform of this one. If one is going to pick someone else, do it in the first place. It is already being done. Why go to the waste of a sham of a so-called election?

The reality is that every single one of the people in the other chamber is a decent person. I think of Senator Dallaire, Senator Mahovlich, Senator Lang, Senator Meighen and Senator Baker. There are all kinds of them. They are really decent, hard-working, honest people. The premise of the chamber, the so-called chamber of sober second thought--mind, that is not completely gone--is that senators are supposed to peer review legislation that comes from the elected House to ensure that it meets the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Bill of Rights and the Constitution of Canada.

In theory, that actually sounds pretty good. We select learned people from around the country to go into the Senate. These are people with life experience in a variety of fields. We use their expertise to peer review our legislation. Then, because they do not have a constituency, per se, they can report on issues facing the country. For example, the Kirby report on mental health was quite good. However, we have to ask ourselves, do we need a publicly funded Senate to produce a report like that? There are probably a lot of private entities out there that may have been able to produce the same report. Senator Kirby also did the 1982 report on the east coast fisheries, and that did not go very well. There is good and bad in both of those reports.

Having said that, they get to peer review executive legislation from the House of Commons. But do they peer review executive legislation from the House of Commons? No, they do not. A classic example is Bill C-311 in a previous Parliament. I am looking at some of my colleagues who were here. It passed the democratically elected House of Commons, went through the committee stage, went through third reading and passed, not once, but twice. Bill C-311 then went to the Senate, where it was supposed to be reviewed, but Bill C-311, the environmental bill from the NDP, did not even get to first base. It did not even get to the clubhouse. It did not even get to the parking lot. Some senators stood and said no. There were no witnesses, no discussion, nothing and the Conservative senators absolutely killed it.

If constituents of Canada vote, they take democracy seriously. We have to ask ourselves, where was the democracy in that? I can guarantee that if that happened to a Conservative bill and New Democrat senators killed it, the Conservatives would be screaming from the rafters. They would be doing what Randy White did, with the mariachi band, in 1995 or 1996, standing in front of the Senate, doing a Mexican salsa. I remember those days very well, how they ridiculed the Senate because a certain Mr. Thompson spent most of his time in Mexico.