Mr. Speaker, thanks for the fair warning about the amount of time. I am sure I will be warned before it is over; I love the signals that are given by the chair.

Today I am going to discuss a number of things on the motion that has been brought forward by the party opposite. The first thing I want to cover is something I am hearing a lot of in the House today, whether this is truly the best use of our time.

I have to say that when visiting the coffee shops back in St. Thomas or Aylmer, it is not. We should be here talking about jobs and the economy. I certainly have that conversation a lot. When we get out of this place to spend time back home, the real answer is that it is about jobs and the economy. If the discussion of the Senate ever came up, it would probably be because I brought it up. I chair our procedure and House affairs committee, and that is where we talk about this. I might be asked what I have been doing, and if we talked about Senate reform that would probably be the only reason it would come up on the street.

The real question is about jobs and the economy. This government and this Prime Minister has proven that we can multi-task; we can do a number of things at once. Here we are, sharing in that multi-tasking, covering off a topic that does not seem to be of much use to us today.

I will talk a little about the priorities of this place and how we got to where we are today on this topic. When we get to Senate reform, I will talk a little about Senate reform and what has been put forward by this Prime Minister and this party in our time here, and the help or hurt, whichever way members would like to take it, of the party opposite on helping move that through expeditiously to create the reform they all look for. I will point out the good points and the bad. Certainly another piece we will talk about will be the Senate reform that we are already working on.

I will spend some time talking about our referral to the Supreme Court for an opinion on some of the topics we are talking about, and how instead of the filibustering, talking about topics over and over, and showboating, that we will probably get better answers waiting for the opinion of the Supreme Court and then taking action based on what it has to say.

Unlike some of the speakers before me, who have already come to the conclusion that they need to abolish the Senate, before they have even done the consultation that is talked about in the motion, I will wait and listen to the Supreme Court's ruling first. From that, I will formulate a plan going forward, and I will certainly follow up on Bill C-7, Senate Reform Act, that is currently before the House, which has been referenced. We will do that. We will move forward in that fashion. I think that would be appropriate.

Let us talk about those things. Let us talk about jobs and the economy, and talk about how this fits in. I cannot get up to speak in the House without sharing how the motion before us today on Senate reform is not the topic that is enthusiastically embraced back home. Most often, the topic is on jobs and the economy, and I wish that had been the opposition's choice to talk about today. We could be vigorously debating our opinions on something about jobs, the economy and growth.

However, here we are again. I do not do this often, but I am going to quote one of my friends from across the way. I will talk about one of my friends, the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent. She is special. She does a great job on committee, and we have had discussions on some of these issues.

This morning I was listening, as closely as I possibly could to the topic, when I would rather be talking about jobs and the economy. I listened to the member's speech. In answers to questions, she did respond, which I thought was very appropriate, twice, and it was great.

First, I believe she said thank you for referring it to the Supreme Court. She is right. It was an appropriate thing for us to do. Therefore, on behalf of all Canadians and myself, she is welcome.

The other thing I believe she was asked about were some of the good things that happened in the Senate. The Senate has actually done some remarkable studies and research on topics. She said that they agreed that this had happened. It did work, that it was really what was going on over there.

We should not judge all for the lack of some and we should not judge an institution based on the hypocrisy of wanting today's talking points. It is only safe to say, that this is where we should go.

I find it somewhat strange that we are here today discussing the motion. When asked, the Leader of the Opposition could not clearly deny that he would not appoint senators. There is a bit of hypocrisy there also. Maybe we should have talked about that too.

I want to talk about another one of my other favourite members. The member for Hamilton Centre was up earlier today. I could listen to him for hours. I believe it is part of why I have a loss of hearing, because whether he is right or wrong, he is loud. Whether he is right or wrong, he will ensure that we hear what he has to say. I love him for that and, honestly, for his participation at committee also. He has been a good friend.

I would like to let him know that today I also looked through speeches and the number of times that Senate reform had come to the House and the number of times the members opposite had spoken. I will give a bit of a history lesson on some of that. There were some 40 speeches from the NDP alone on this. There were 88 opposition speakers. It has come forward for debate in the House on 17 days. There have been nine different committee meetings.

We are sometimes asked, where it is. We rotate legislation around from certain days, but I will give some thoughts on some of this.

BillC-7 was brought forward in June of 2011. It came to the House on September 30, 2011, with a couple of opposition party members speaking to it. On October 3, three more got up and spoke to it, I am sure in conjunction with a number of government members and members of the third party. On November 14, more members got up and spoke to it. On November 22, 15 different opposition members spoke on that day alone to Bill C-7, the Senate reform package.

I have been spending today reading through some of those speeches and watching as many speeches as I can in the House also. One would think that if we had to tell anyone the same thing over and over again, this many times, it has been said and done. The real answer is, apparently it is not. We are still putting more speakers up.

On December 7, 2011, two more speakers from the opposite side were up. On December 8, it was another bountiful day on Senate reform. Eleven more members from the opposition got up that day and spoke to Bill C-7.

We have now moved into 2012 on the bill. On February 27, 2012, the same thing occurred. Another seven members from the official opposition were up speaking that day.

The NDP members have found a niche, something they were looking for, a topic that they like, and that is what this is about.

I would like to paraphrase a speech I read today from the member for Winnipeg North, from November 2011, saying perhaps this was what this was about.

The NDP members have found a topic that they think will stir public interest and will move their interests forward, rather than they found a real interest in what would help in the democratic reform of our country.

We need to look more into what it will take to get it done and that leads me to the other topic of the referral to the Supreme Court and how with that in-hand, significant progress may actually work forward, when members quit standing and saying that the court will not accept that or coming up with other reasons as to why we have this legislation going forward.

Let us talk about what was referred to the Supreme Court.

First, the first piece of opinion we have asked the Supreme Court for is something pretty simple and that is term limits. What term would be appropriate for senators to have if indeed senators had term limits? Can we limit the terms of senators? I know that in the past, the retirement date was changed, so I think terms for senators is an opinion that the Supreme Court will come back to us with. We are suggesting nine years in the one piece of legislation, but we have asked the Supreme Court give us an opinion on a number of different terms.

I believe the last study I read at committee the average length of time served by a senator in our House was nine-point-something years and that was the average length of time a senator did serve in the Senate. Therefore, asking about term limits of nine years is probably very appropriate.

The next thing is the democratic selection of Senate nominees. We have asked an opinion of the Supreme Court about the democratic selection of nominees. Can we ask provinces to determine within their provinces who they would like their senators to be? If that happens, then they would be appointed by the Prime Minister to the Senate. Alberta has already chosen to do this. We have senators now who have been elected by the people of Alberta, representing provincially the province of Alberta in the Senate who have been appointed by our Prime Minister. We are asking for the Supreme Court's opinion on that topic to see whether that is a process we could continue to follow. Would that handle the democratic lack we have of unelected senators by having provinces elect them and then move them forward?

There are a couple of other pieces of opinion we have asked the Supreme Court for and one has to do with net worth for senators and the other has to do with what we are talking about today, the abolition of the Senate. We are asking the opinion of the Supreme Court on this very topic. I mentioned the hypocrisy piece that the member for Winnipeg North mentioned in his speech in November 2011, about bringing this topic forward for the sake of political reasons rather than for real democratic reform. We have hit on it exactly. The party opposite knows the Supreme Court has been asked for its opinion on this topic and yet what is its motion today? Let us spend the whole day talking about this instead of—

Joe Preston

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