Bill C-20 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  Thank you very much. I want to apologize for the absence of my colleague, Robert Roach, who was going to be here. He took ill from some weekend travelling in Winnipeg, so I'll be here by myself. I'm pleased to have this opportunity. Senate reform has been an interest of mine s

Bill C-20 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  They are, as you point out, very similar questions or related questions. To my mind, the answer goes back to how we design an effective electoral system for the Senate. Let me start with the case of Ontario, which is an interesting one. The proposal recommends a single transfer

Bill C-20 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  Yes. So you can actually have minority group representation within the Senate through an electoral system that's well designed. I'm sorry, I'm backing around your question a bit, but my fear is that we could have an electoral system that would replicate the representational pro

Bill C-20 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  Your question goes to the heart of the matter in terms of minority representation. Do we build that in through an appointed mechanism, or do we build it in through an electoral system that increases the possibility of minority representation without guaranteeing it? In other word

Bill C-20 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  I have a couple of responses, and they may seem a bit intemperate, but I don't mean them to be. The first point is that I don't equate democracy with intergovernmentalism. I don't think agreements among governments are the only way to go forward in a democratic society. Secon

Bill C-20 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  My own view is that I would prefer to have the courts respond to the actions of Parliament rather than to turn the situation over to the courts as the starting point. To my mind, there may be a case that a reference would make sense, but it is an opportunity to delay, it's an o

Bill C-20 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  My understanding—and I don't speak with a great deal of insight—is the western provincial governments have not yet waded into this. If you want to get a general sense of the political landscape in western Canada, I would describe it in the following terms: a commitment by provi

Bill C-20 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  I'm fundamentally a democrat, and I like the idea of involving the population on major questions of constitutional reform. We did it with Charlottetown. To my mind, it was a good thing. We didn't do it with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but polling data convinced some of th

Bill C-20 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  Let me back into a response by speaking from a very narrow Alberta perspective, but I think it goes to what you're saying. There are two facts of life about politics in Alberta. One is that we have a tremendous concentration of power because there is no check to the majority gov

Bill C-20 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  The first of the three Es of the triple-E Senate is that it's elected, which I agree with, but the triple-E model never actually specified how the election would take place, and that's why it's incomplete. It's an effective Senate, which is again somewhat undefined, but it's also

Bill C-20 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  The single transferrable vote system, and indeed most forms of proportional representation, if we were to go that way, work least well.... Pardon me. The smaller the constituency, the worse they work. If you have a single transferrable vote and you're only electing one member, yo

Bill C-20 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  I hesitate to use the example of the Charter of Rights, because, as has been pointed out previously, this is not necessarily.... I mean, how we got to the Constitution in 1982 is not uniformly seen as a good way of proceeding. But it is interesting that a couple of the western pr

Bill C-20 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  Yes, it is in some respects.

Bill C-20 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  Those are good questions. The Prime Minister at the present time takes advice from who knows where when he makes appointments. We have no idea who advises him. We have no idea if he accepts or rejects the advice. It's an entirely internal process in the head of the Prime Ministe

Bill C-20 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  The third question has to do with minority representation in the Senate. I'm not a very good minority representative in any way, except for this sort of odd Alberta side of things. Having minority representation in an appointed, discredited, and in many ways dysfunctional chambe