Tom Lukiwski

[Government Response to Petitions, May 9th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8) I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to several petitions.

[Equalization, May 9th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it is always amusing to me when the hon. member for Wascana gets up to speak about Saskatchewan and what he did for Saskatchewan.

The truth of the matter is under the Liberal government, the Liberals had no plans whatsoever to deal with removal of non-renewable natural resources from the equalization formula. We promised it. We delivered it.

Furthermore, Saskatchewan received the best deal on equalization. We received $878 million of new funding, a higher per capita payment than any other province in Canada. That is a great deal for Saskatchewan.

[Questions on the Order Paper, May 8th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.

[Government Response to Petitions, May 8th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8) I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to five petitions.

[Questions on the Order Paper, May 7th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all remaining questions be allowed to stand.

[Questions on the Order Paper, May 7th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, Question No. 188 will be answered today.

[Government Response to Petitions, May 7th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to 10 petitions.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, May 7th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I should correct myself. In response to the intervention from my colleague from Winnipeg Centre, I said that at committee the member for Ottawa Centre voted against the motion put forward by the Conservatives. It was, I believe, the member for Acadie—Bathurst who voted against it, but nonetheless, it still was an NDP member on the committee who voted against consultations by the committee itself.

With respect to the question of my hon. colleague from Yukon, there are a number of examples, some minor and some fairly major, where senators, after examining a bill that has gone from our place to their place, have come forward with amendments that have strengthened the bill. Sometimes those amendments were technical in nature. Perhaps the wording was slightly flawed. Sometimes they were more substantive.

My point is simply this. If the Senate was doing the job that it purports to do, if it was doing the job that we all want it to do, it would examine legislation coming from this place in a non-partisan manner to see if they could strengthen it.

The purpose of the Senate is not to obstruct legislation, but to examine it for weaknesses and to recommend positive changes. Yet what we see time and time again, by the very nature of senators being unelected and therefore unaccountable, is that they are not looking for ways to strengthen a bill, they are looking for ways in which to obstruct a bill. Again I go back to Bill S-4, a bill that has been before the Senate for close to a year. It is a 66 word bill, yet it has been there for close to a year and there is no end in sight.

That is because, in my view at least, the Liberal senators wish to obstruct this bill. They do not want to see it go forward, despite the views of the majority of members in this place. They are using the powers they have to obstruct legislation when in fact they should be doing just the opposite. They should be looking for ways in which to pass legislation as quickly and as swiftly as they can, while all the time ensuring that the legislation is properly formatted.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, May 7th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Winnipeg Centre for his question, which was not on Senate reform, but was on proportional representation.

I have answered this question in this place many times before. He speaks to the consultation process that this government has engaged in, on trying to find more avenues for democratic reform, but when he criticizes the method in which we have engaged in this consultation process, he forgets one very important fact. At the procedure and House affairs committee, this government, not the NDP nor the Liberals, proposed a motion to allow members of the committee to go through a consultation process Canada wide. Every individual party in this House would have been represented by its members who would go forward as a committee and engage Canadians in the consultation on democratic reform, which I am sure would have included proportional representation.

What happened when we proposed this motion at the committee level? The NDP voted against it. The member for Ottawa Centre voted against it. Had members voted in favour of this consultation process, we would have been engaged in that process right now. Perhaps the member for Winnipeg Centre might have been his party's representative. For some reason, the New Democratic Party voted against a motion which would have allowed the procedure and House affairs committee to engage in democratic reform consultations across Canada.

The member has no credibility when it comes to asking a question about why we may have a bias. The very actions of those members showed that they clearly have a bias themselves.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, May 7th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I find myself smiling every time I hear a member from the opposition raise some of these concerns because they have no credence whatsoever.

Let me deal with the last point first. The bill contains a provision that Senate consultation would take place at the same time as a federal election. Provinces would be consulted should they wish to engage in their own consultations during provincial elections. This is a federal House, so those provisions are taken care of. For the member to suggest it is not accountable and not democratic is sheer folly because it is.

I want to get back to the member's first point where he said it was the most egregious appointment ever. I would take great umbrage at that when he is speaking of Senator Fortier because as the Prime Minister stated at the time of the appointment, the reason he appointed Senator Fortier to the Senate was he wished to have him in cabinet representing the city of Montreal, the second largest city in Canada. He also stated at that time, and this is something that the members of the opposition conveniently forget, that the appointment is not until age 75. It is until the next election. That is it.

When the Liberals appointed senators, until 1965 they were there for life and now they are there until age 75. That is not the case here. For the member to talk about the most egregious case of appointments in Canadian parliamentary history is absolutely out of the question. It is not true.

I look forward to more questions because again, I have not had this much fun listening to questions in a long, long time.