Mr. Speaker, this is quite an interesting bill from the Bloc. I had a few different thoughts about it.

One is it shows a shifting view on the minimum wage. I wonder what precedent it would set for our minimum wage laws if we started paying a government employee one dollar a year.

Another thought was just to reflect on one of my favourite quotes from Winston Churchill. He said that the genius of a system of constitutional monarchy is that, when a nation wins a battle they say God save the Queen; and when they lose a battle they vote down the prime minister.

The third thought I had on this bill was that it really amounts to a throwing out of the baby with the bathwater. Let me explain the context around that a bit.

We had a fairly serious scandal over the last number of years involving the Governor General. It really started with a choice by the Prime Minister to not use the review and vetting process that had been put in place by the previous government. There had been some discussion about the appropriate mechanisms for review of a vice-regal appointment and the creation of a committee to assist with that work. The Governor General is an extremely important position in our political life. The appointment of that position is very consequential, so steps were taken under the previous Conservative government to strengthen the effectiveness and the independence of that appointment process.

The Prime Minister, whether just in a typical but ill-conceived desire to be different from his predecessor or for some other political reason, decided to ignore that process. There was an appointment in which clearly, as a result of some of the problems that happened after the appointment took place but also evident in other things that came to light, the Prime Minister had shown a real lack of wisdom in bringing this scandal about by simply not using the appointment structure that had been put in place previously. Had the Prime Minister simply chosen to consult and follow the processes that had been laid down, then we would not have had this problem.

Following that, with the scandal emerging and the resignation of the former governor general, there has justly been a public outcry around the significant post-office benefits that the Governor General receives when he or she leaves that position, in particular in the context of a governor general who did not even complete the full term and had to leave as a result of scandal. I have certainly been hearing from many constituents who think, especially for somebody who does not complete their term of office, that these benefits are not appropriate.

There is a lot of work done, and I salute the work being done by my colleague, the member for Sarnia—Lambton, around trying to address this issue and identify the particular problem in the context of the scandal and a solution. There is a failure of the Prime Minister in this case, and we have seen a lot of scandals out of the current government. Any time there is a scandal, it raises questions about our public institutions because it can weaken faith in those institutions. Sometimes we have those within this Parliament who want to capitalize on that to run down the institution completely. This is what we see, frankly, with this Bloc bill that is taking a real issue following a real scandal as a result of the Prime Minister's failures to engage in proper vetting and use the process that was available. The Bloc is trying to take it to the other extreme and essentially degrade the office of the Governor General by saying that we would pay the Governor General one dollar a year.

I have a couple of points specifically on that proposal. I am not entirely sure it is a serious proposal. Of course, given the number of ridings it runs people in, the Bloc will never form a national government, but hypothetically if it did, I do not think this is a policy it would even implement. It is obviously untenable for lots of reasons. However, it is interesting to just observe that in our parliamentary history, the history of our system, I do not think in this country but historically in the U.K., there was a time when parliamentarians were not compensated.

It was actually a big reform, the idea that members of Parliament should be paid for what they do. As much as we do not often hear clamouring from the public for higher salaries for functionaries or politicians, there was a reality to the need for that reform because at one time politics, because members of Parliament were not paid, was the exclusive proviso of the wealthy. If something is not paid, then only people who have other sources of revenue could do that activity. However, if a salary is introduced, even a modest one, for something, then it makes that position accessible to more people.

As much as we can debate the specific levels, the fact that we pay some salary to elected officials, to public servants, to people who hold important ceremonial offices, is necessary if we want those positions to be accessible to all Canadians.

The proposal from the Bloc, to the extent that it is a serious proposal, to effectively not pay the Governor General would mean that a person would have to be quite independently wealthy to be in this position, because they would likely be looking at five years, hopefully, if they serve out their term, of not receiving any compensation. They would have to be volunteering full time for that period.

If the Bloc wants to go down this road, we may see private members' bills for them to eliminate their own salaries and eliminate the salaries of other people who work in government. I do not anticipate we would see that. The reality is that we want important offices of state to be accessible to people based on their merits and based on the support they receive, not based on their ability to maintain themselves from other sources of revenue while they are in those positions.

I do think there is another issue, perhaps the substance behind what the Bloc is trying to do here, and that is to undermine the system of government, to challenge the idea of constitutional monarchy in general. I would just say that the structure of our system is time-tested and it has been effective, having a kind of locus of national loyalty that is independent of elected politicians.

In presidential systems, there is an elected person who also sort of represents the nation in a symbolic sense. I think the genius of constitutional monarchy is that the decision-making power is in the hands of the people's representatives, but there is also a locus of national loyalty that is independent of elected politicians. This breeds what I would call a healthy disrespect for politicians. That is, we are not the people who are the ultimate locus of shared national focus.

We do not have a president who embodies these dual roles, political but also ceremonial. We have a separation between the ceremonial function of the person who represents the unity of the nation and elected politicians, who have important decision-making roles but who inevitably, by engaging in the process of making decisions and debate, become points of division. People can agree or disagree with what a particular politician is saying, but hopefully a monarch or a viceregal can become an expression of universally shared values.

That distinction is a better system. It is well embodied by that quote I shared from Winston Churchill at the beginning, that when a nation wins a battle, they sing God Save the Queen, and when they lose a battle, they vote down the prime minister. In great moments of national celebration, it is not all about the politicians. It is about the values that a nation shares and the ability of a monarch or a viceregal, independent of politics, to seek to embody those values.

The Governor General is an important office. The failures of the Prime Minister that precipitated a scandal in the context of that office are unfortunate, and we need to do better going forward, but let us not accept this Bloc attempt to throw out the value of these institutions just because of this scandal. We can address the issues in this scandal while still recognizing the critically important role played by this office.

Garnett Genuis

$591,290.00