Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. members for unanimously agreeing to my colleague's request to share his time today.
This is a very important topic, and I hope that the NDP will help us move forward on discussions concerning Senate reform. I do not believe that this is the most important issue to Canadians across the country, but it is still important.
Given the importance of it, there are a number of implications here. First, there is the whole aspect of a referendum itself. Being that I would like to think of myself as a true democrat, I cannot oppose the notion of a referendum. Certainly, I think there is a time and a place for a referendum. Whether it should be on this particular topic, at this time, is still worthy of question. If there is going to be a referendum on a topic, I believe people need to be properly informed of all the dimensions of the issue and the implications. It is apparently a non-binding referendum, so the cost would have to be taken into account. We should ask ourselves the question: What price democracy? Cost should not be a prohibiting factor when there is a bona fide reason for a referendum question.
On the question of the Senate itself, because a particular institution may not be functioning to the democratic expectations of “the people” in my view should not be a reason for its elimination. A lot of people think the House of Commons does not function properly and I do not hear anybody here advocating for its elimination. However, can it be improved? I profoundly believe, as does the government and our Prime Minister, that the Senate can be improved and we have taken some legislative steps in that regard.
Most Canadians quite rightly balk at the notion of receiving a job that gives legislative power, in fact the power to slow down or speed up legislation coming out of this duly elected body here, and to have that position virtually for life, up to 45 years for a senator appointed at the age of 30. We have proposed ways of dealing with that with an eight-year term. The fact that the federal government, that is the prime minister, would be the sole means by which people could be appointed to the Senate, most people balk at that as do we.
That is why we and the Prime Minister have been clear, through the senatorial election act and through the statements of the Prime Minister, that if the provinces would come up with a way of electing, in a democratic way, their choice for the Senate, then the government would be pleased to make that appointment.
In fact, the proof is in the pudding in Alberta, where at the time of the municipal election, the Senate choice of the people of that particular province was also on the ballot. There are Senate selections in the Senate today who have actually received more votes than anybody here, more votes than the Prime Minister. They are solely from Alberta, but they sit there truly as elected Senators, and they are going to be there for a term that has been defined.
The other question that needs to be highlighted here: What is the reason for a Senate? As constituted back in Canada's formation, and in our genesis, probably the main underlying reason was to protect property owners. They had to own property, and still do today, to be in the Senate.
There is another very significant reason to have a Senate. First, we recognize that no electoral system is perfect. However, as Churchill said, “It is better than the alternative”.
How can we make a more perfect electoral system here in Canada? I am a firm supporter of first past the post and representation by population. I believe in that strongly. We should not be totally fixed to the one-thousandth per cent that every constituency would be right down to one or two people, the exact same amount, as is the U.S. experience.
Our present chief justice, Justice McLachlin, before she was head of the Supreme Court, wrote a very good overview on this question, that the Canadian experience shows it does not have to be as tight and minute as, let us say, in the United States. There is some reason to have some flexibility there. However, we are still committed to representation by population.
Here is the question that countries around the world have faced. What do we do when one of our provinces or states is highly populated and another province is not? Then we will always have more elected representatives from the highly populated province than we will from the less populated province.
That province or state will always be able to out-vote the other less populated one. We made some provisions for that, constitutionally, so that P.E.I., for instance, has some protection from, let us say, Ontario. It could be argued that it is minimal.
What could be put in place so there is not a situation where a province or, as in Canada, a city of MPs, a city full of MPs in this House right now, can vote or cancel out the votes of MPs from an entire less populated province?
The way to put that balance, even though it will never be perfect, in place is to have senators elected. Unlike the United States and some other places that have a bicameral system, we do not have the same number of senators for each province. Some people would say we should not have the system at all because it is not the same number in each province.
What I am saying is that it is not perfect, but if we have senators who are democratically elected, it would give a bit of a buffer to the less populated provinces, by having a bicameral house, a two-bodied house as it were, to have a number of senators there, using the U.S. model or similar ones around the world.
It would have to first be passed by the people who are elected, representation by population, but then the bill would have to be passed in the Senate as well. So a small state like Rhode Island could stand up to a more populated state like California, or a small province like P.E.I. could stand up to a more populated one, like Ontario or British Columbia.
That notion of protecting the citizens of less populated areas has to be full understood. It has to be contemplated that if we wipe out the Senate, it will forever remove the protective capability of less populated provinces from more populated provinces.