Bill C-20 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  But it does make the process difficult to move unless you can shake it up in some way, because those people who have levers are not all that enthusiastic about it. Even if—even if—in their heart of hearts they think this is the right way to go, it's still hard to whip up a great

Bill C-20 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  The small step is that the Prime Minister will now, under Bill C-20, accept advice from the people of the provinces rather than from his own conscience, advisers, or whatever. To my mind, that's a very fundamental change. The difficulty, and I think an area where this committee

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

Bill C-20 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  Sure do.

Bill C-20 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  I have two quick responses. I've been involved in public opinion polling on Senate issues for a lifetime, it seems, and one thing is emphatically clear: the status quo enjoys virtually no public support. We're down to numbers about the same as for people who believe Elvis is sti

Bill C-20 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  There is no support. What's also clear is that if people are forced at this point to choose between reform and abolition, there are important differences across the country and important partisan differences. New Democrats tend to support abolition, Quebeckers tend to support ab

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  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  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  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  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  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