Ted Hsu

[Senate Reform Act, February 27th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question. I am not an expert on the Senate, but I do have some thoughts on this issue. The problem with an elected Senate is that we do not currently have a mechanism for resolving conflicts between the House of Commons and the Senate. If the Senate were elected, it would be mandated by the people of Canada to exercise the power they confer upon it. Before senators are elected, we must study and establish, together with the provinces, a mechanism to resolve this conflict.

However, we can come up with other, very good possibilities. One that I like is establishing a committee to identify individuals in our country who are very experienced, who have played an important role and who are not usually active in politics. I am thinking of leading scientists, for example. It is very difficult to work in the sciences—doing research, for example—and to be actively involved in politics. In my opinion, this committee could look to such sectors for people who know Canada, who have played a major role in its history, but who are not usually involved in politics. They could be appointed to the Senate and contribute much to the work it does here.

[Senate Reform Act, February 27th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for her good question. In my opinion, the Senate needs to be reformed. Nonetheless, as the hon. member said, the problem is that this bill does not provide for Senate reform. It is true that the regions in our country are under-represented in the Senate at this time. I am totally in favour of a real reform of the Senate, but to achieve that we have to consult the provinces and the regions in order for the Senate to work.

[Senate Reform Act, February 27th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today to Bill C-7. I will begin by talking about the Senate and where it came from.

The Senate was established by the provinces. As everybody knows, Canada is a federation. Before Confederation, some individual provinces were working together, such as in the legislative Parliament of Canada, and Ontario and Quebec were in a confederation with the Atlantic provinces.

The origin of the Senate comes from Confederation. The provinces got together and decided they would have an elected House of Commons where most of the power would reside and then they would have a second body modelled after legislatures in other countries in which the members would be drawn from a class of people with a different viewpoint and it would be independent of the elected House of Commons. This legislature was established by the provinces when they got together to form the confederation that is Canada today. The existence and role of the Senate, the way it is composed and the way that senators are chosen is embedded in our Constitution.

The bill proposes to change how senators are chosen and, because that is a substantial change, I believe the only way to change how senators are chosen would be to amend the Constitution, which requires much more than an act of the House of Commons. In fact, it requires the participation of the provinces. It would require seven provinces with at least 50% of the population of Canada. It is my belief that the provinces should be involved in something that they helped set up in the first place.

We have a bicameral system, the House of Commons and the Senate, where the two bodies are supposed to be somewhat independent of each other. One should not be under the control of the other. They are supposed to think independently and have an independent point of view. Therefore, it should not be possible for one body to decide how the members of the other body are chosen. This is sort of a moral reason that we should not be acting unilaterally here in Ottawa to change how senators are chosen. We really should be consulting with the provinces and amending the Constitution.

If the government thinks that what it is doing makes sense from a constitutional point of view and really believes it is the right thing to do, I would challenge the government to go to the Supreme Court, as we have done with other questions, such as the lead up to the Clarity Act. The government should ask the Supreme Court if it thinks, in light of the Constitution, that this is a legal thing to do. That would probably save time, money and effort in the future when one or more of the provinces decides to challenge the act, if the bill is passed.

I would like to focus my remarks today on what I view as a contradiction and I will try to explain what the contradiction is.

The bill asks the provinces and territories to provide the Governor General with the names of people who could become senators. It is expected, by this legislation, that the provinces and territories would hold some form of election in order for the people of that province to choose a list of potential senators. It is a little bit strange because the legislation would not provide funding to the provinces to run these elections to choose a senator who will work in Ottawa. It is kind of strange that the federal government would not provide funding for these elections for which it is calling.

Because the legislation says that the provinces and territories would simply be nominating people, as a result of an election or by other means, somehow that is not a substantial change in how we choose senators. Somehow, because these recommendations are not binding on the Governor General or the Prime Minister, in effect, this is not a substantial enough change to trigger the requirement of the federal government to consult with the provinces before proceeding with this kind of change.

The contradiction is that if we are to take these elections seriously, if we really think we will be changing the Senate so that it becomes elected, which is one of the Es of the triple-E Senate that many members of the Conservative side, the reform side of the House, have spoken to in the past, we need to believe that these elections would have some force and that the Prime Minister would be bound in some way. If not legally, then in a moral sense, the Prime Minister would be bound to accept the results of these Senate elections.

If we are to take seriously the idea of having an elected Senate and that Bill C-7 would implement an elected Senate, then we cannot take seriously the argument that the bill is not a substantial change to how senators are elected and that somehow we do not need to consult the provinces. That is the essential contradiction.

Related to that there is another contradiction. A lot of people who have talked about Senate reform want the Senate to be more representative of the people of Canada. That is one of the motivations behind having an elected Senate. I think Senate reform is a good thing because, from what I have seen in my less than one year working here in Ottawa, senators represent a great source of experience and wisdom which would be too valuable to simply throw away, as some of my hon. colleagues would like to do by abolishing the Senate. The Senate is a very valuable source of advice and experience and sober second thought makes sense.

However, it has always been the case that the Senate, not being elected, has deferred to the elected House of Commons whenever there was a conflict. In the past, because the unelected Senate always deferred to the elected House of Commons, it was not such a big deal if, because of an historical artifact, certain provinces had a proportionally higher representation in the Senate than other provinces.

If we were to pass this bill and have an elected Senate, the Senate would have stronger powers. It would have a mandate from the people to sometimes challenge the House of Commons. It would have more power, which would be given to it by hon. members who want to reform the Senate, and there are such members on both sides of the House. At the same time as the Senate would be reformed in this way, we would need to face the fact that some western provinces, in particular Alberta and British Columbia, would be underrepresented. The other contradiction is that hon. members who want to reform the Senate would be handicapping the ability of Alberta and British Columbia to be properly represented in Ottawa.

[Government Communications, February 16th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the government cannot admit the truth that Conservatives are against free speech for scientists.

Yesterday Francesca Grifo, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' scientific integrity program, spoke about the muzzling of Canadian scientists calling it a scary thing, something that is happening quite frequently.

This completely contradicts what the minister told us on Monday. Maybe he cannot speak freely as well without permission from his political masters.

[Government Communications, February 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, in December, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gave an administrative order on scientific integrity, telling its scientists to speak freely to the public and to the press about their research. Canadian government scientists do not have freedom of speech.

This week, the American Association for the Advancement of Science meets in Vancouver with a talk entitled bluntly “The Muzzling of Canada's Federal Scientists”.

Why is the government against free speech for scientists?

[Business of Supply, February 9th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, can my hon. colleague tell us what foreign investments would be welcomed by the NDP?

[Business of Supply, February 9th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague called the closure of the Electro-Motive plant in London a tragedy for the whole community because of all the other jobs outside of the plant that will be affected because of the economic loss.

Given that it was such a tragedy, does the member think that the regulations should be changed around the foreign purchases of assets that are important to everyday Canadians here in Canada? Are there changes that need to be made and, if so, what changes does he think should be made?

[Business of Supply, February 9th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I have a couple of questions.

The minister said in his remarks that the purchase of Electro-Motive was not renewable because one party was a company in a WTO country and the other party was also a company in a WTO country. That confuses me a little. When Sinopec purchased Canadian oil sands assets from ConocoPhillips, that was a transaction between two companies located in two WTO countries.

If two companies were proposing to purchase assets that were in trouble, one company being a hedge fund, which had a reputation of simply liquidating the assets of whatever it purchased to extract a value 10% higher than what it paid, and the other company had a reputation of trying to build up distressed assets, to build something big, new and create jobs and innovate, would the government not want to step in? Maybe we should change our rules to give the government a mandate to step in to try to make the best choice for Canadian workers.

[Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act, February 7th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I have heard during these debates a lot of speakers who would dispute what my hon. colleague said when he quoted somebody, and I cannot remember who, saying that there was no connection between the long gun registry and the behaviour of criminals.

If my colleague is willing to make that argument, why is he not willing to make the same argument when it comes to mandatory sentences when there is no evidence that they work either?

[Ending the Long-gun Registry Act, February 7th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I was not going to enter this debate, but then I heard something from the minister that made me realize it is worth standing up and countering what the government says.

The minister is accusing us of criminalizing hunters and sports shooters. That is not the intent, nor is it the actual effect of the long gun registry. Every time the Conservatives say that, we have to stand and say that is wrong, that it is not true. That is one of the reasons we need to continue this debate. Everything has to be countered. On every argument that is brought up, light has to be shed on what the government is saying, the things that are not true.