Senator Plett: Committees are masters of their own domain and their own area. I will be part of the committee studies and I will state my opinion there, as will others at that committee. If the committee should, for some reason, ask for more time, it would obviously have to be considered. We did exactly that with Bill C-11, Senator Patterson. That did not exactly go as the government had hoped it would go. Without question, I have a little more sympathy for this for personal reasons.

We are in a difficult situation, Senator Patterson. I said it at the start of my speech, and I will not sugar-coat that. I gave my word to a dying colleague that I would not stand in the way of this moving forward. I did not promise him support for the bill, but said that I would not stand in the way.

I believe we had fair and open discussions at our leadership meetings. I have sometimes said these are in camera meetings that we had at leadership. I’ve never entirely accepted that, so I want to be a little careful. I’m sure you have had discussions with the leader of your caucus. He took part in that, as did I, as well as Senator Cordy, Senator Saint-Germain and Senator Gold. Our chiefs of staff were there. There were a lot of people, so there are many who can call me out on this if it isn’t true. It was my opinion that we had unanimous agreement that we would do exactly what we’re doing now.

Now, we can call that rushing. It would certainly not be the first time that a committee has not had enough meeting times — as per what the committee would like — but we will see where this goes. I firmly believe, Senator Patterson, that the provinces are also masters of their own domain. I do not anticipate, quite frankly, that if the three Prairie provinces get together and say “no,” that this is going to go somewhere.

Colleagues, with all respect, if somebody were pushing something on Ontario or Quebec, I think, maybe, it would be handled a little differently than when they push something on the Western provinces.

However, having said that, MP Carr was a proud Manitoban, and this bill is coming out of Manitoba. It was not initiated by the federal government, even though they may have put their power behind it at the end. It was initiated out of Manitoba.

[Translation]

Senator Plett: Well, let me answer that in two ways. Number one, in the other place, we very regularly have time allocation, so it’s clearly being done. They do it all the time. They have done it for 150 years, Senator Patterson.

We have not had time allocation; we have had negotiations. This was done not by the executive branch but by five elected leaders in their respective caucuses. They decided the timelines here. In my opinion, they were unanimous in that decision.