Mr. Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, NDP)

Mr. Speaker, it is not okay to put poison in our food just because it is properly labelled. Banning trans fat will save lives, full stop, period, yet 11 years after Parliament directed government to ban trans fat, we are still clogging our children's arteries with this toxic goop.

The United States has taken direct action and banned trans fat in all its forms. Will Canadians have to wait until the NDP forms the next government before we can protect consumers from this public health hazard?

Mr. Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, NDP)

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 11th report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, in relation to its study on the programs and the activities of the Canadian General Standards Board.

Mr. Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, NDP)

Mr. Speaker, with regard to the late point of this session of Parliament, I want to make sure that we use the time we have in the House of Commons correctly. The issue we are dealing with now is a $57 million vote for the Senate of Canada, vote 1 in the main estimates. I am worried that the parliamentary secretary is going off on a tangent about the merits of the economic action plan and not speaking to this important, timely, topical issue of whether or not it is the will of Parliament to send another $57 million to the Senate of Canada for it to use or misuse as it wishes.

Mr. Pat Martin

Mr. Speaker, Canadians may be even more concerned that the total budget for the Senate is more like $90 million. The House of Commons gets to vote on the $57 million in vote 1, which is the appropriation for the Senate, but some of its funding is in fact statutory.

The fact is that Canadians are wondering why they are paying anything for it. Not only has there been a pattern of abuse, but it serves as an undemocratic barrier to the will of the people as expressed by those elected representatives in the House of Commons, time and time again. There are 133 examples that the researchers at the Library of Parliament found for me where bills were vetoed by the Senate which were passed in the House of Commons.

Nobody elected those guys to make legislation. Senators should have no right to interfere with the will of the House of Commons, and they certainly should have no right to generate bills.

More and more bills that we are dealing with in the House of Commons, as members know, are not called Bill C-51, for example, but rather Bill S-6, Bill S-13, or Bill S-33. The bills are originating in the Senate. Here we are dutifully debating bills that are generated in the other chamber. It is completely upside down. It is completely absurd. If Canadians think about it, this is an affront to democracy and everything that is good and decent about our notion of democracy.

When Sir. John A. Macdonald first crafted the Senate, to cut him some slack, he was two years away from the American Civil War. He was looking south of the border thinking that he could not give too much authority without some checks and balances or God knows what could happen. North America was traumatized. However, that happened not in the last century, but the century before that.

We do not need to be bound by the limitations of John A. Macdonald's thinking when he made that terrible quote about how “We must protect the rights of minorities, and the rich are always fewer in number than the poor”.

Mr. Pat Martin

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I have cut the hon. parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister a lot of slack. I know he is running out of gas and running out of ideas. I think he got the short straw on who would try to defend the indefensible tonight, but he is straying wildly off the subject matter, which is vote 1 in the main estimates and whether the House of Commons should approve the appropriation of $57 million to send over to the Senate for its members to spend as they please.

He is wildly off topic. We have tried to be tolerant because I kind of feel sorry for the guy. He always gets stuck with this crappy job of trying to defend the indefensible, but he is so far off topic that he is doing a disservice to the debate.