Hon. Renée Dupuis: My question is for the Government Representative in the Senate. On April 30, 2021, during the Committee of the Whole that was studying the bill to provide for the resumption and continuation of operations at the Port of Montreal, I asked the Minister of Transport a question.

The union representatives had told us that the strike had been called in response to what they perceived as provocation on the part of the employers. They also complained twice in their presentation during the Committee of the Whole that the real decision makers were not at the bargaining table and that they were not speaking with the right people.

I wanted to know whether the minister felt that there was an element in these difficult negotiations, which had been going on for years, that concerned the specific governance structure of the Port of Montreal. In response, the minister said that they were in the process of reviewing the port structure and that they were studying a proposal to modernize how ports are governed. He said that they were always looking for ways to enhance the governance structure.

Senator Gold, can you tell us where the Minister of Transport is on his review of the governance structure of ports in Canada? Can you tell us whether consultations have been held, what consultations are coming up and who is participating? What deadline has the minister set for completing this review?

Senator Dupuis: Thank you for that partial response. I would still like to know the minister’s timeline to address this issue.

A review is being conducted, as are consultations, but I would like to know if he can table the list of agencies consulted, the comments received and, most importantly, the timeline for completing the review.

Hon. Mary Coyle: Honourable senators, my question is for the Government Representative in the Senate.

Last week, for the first time since COP26, political leaders and responsible ministers gathered in Copenhagen to discuss the implementation of the landmark Glasgow Climate Pact agreement. The ministerial meeting in Denmark has reignited momentum for political cooperation and urgent action on the Glasgow commitments. It has also kickstarted ambition leading up to COP27, which will be held in Egypt in November.

Senator Gold, could you tell us where Canada is on its commitments to implement the Glasgow Climate Pact and other agreements made at COP26? Where are we actually on track, where are we falling behind and where might we be ahead of schedule?

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): I thank the honourable senator for the question.

Canada considers climate change a global challenge requiring a global solution, as your question properly implies.

In that regard, Canada is taking a leadership role on the international stage to tackle climate change, including reaffirming our support for the Global Methane Pledge and Canada’s objective of reducing methane emissions in the oil and gas sector and committing to ending deforestation by 2030, amongst other initiatives.

With respect to the specifics of your questions, I’ll seek clarification from the government and report back to the chamber.

Hon. Diane Bellemare: My question is for the Leader of the Government in the Senate.

Senator Gold, an article published in La Presse on May 11 was entitled “Mieux vaut être riche pour tomber sur le chômage,” or “you better be rich if you end up unemployed.” I am not the only one to talk about this problem. The article begins as follows:

With the unemployment rate at an all-time low, Ottawa is certainly not overburdened by EI claims. However, it can take four, even five months before a claimant gets their first payment.

Employment Insurance may indeed be complicated, but nothing justifies such wait times. According to La Presse, officials even suggested to claimants that they sell their possessions to make ends meet. That is appalling.

I join my voice to those who are calling out this situation. EI is an insurance, not a social assistance program. Contributors who are entitled to EI should not have to show that they are destitute. This problem is not related to the future EI reform but rather to the application of the current legislation.

What urgent measures is the government planning to take or has taken to require Service Canada to pay the benefits that the unemployed are entitled to receive in a dignified manner and on time, meaning within 28-days, without having to call their MP?

Senator Gold: Thank you for the question. As you well know, we are working to invite ministers to participate in exchanges with the Senate. This creates opportunities to delve into the issues associated with ministerial portfolios.

I note the interest you are showing in this ministerial portfolio. I understand that you recently had the opportunity to speak with the minister. The minister remains engaged with the Senate. She made herself available on several occasions during the pandemic. I am certain that the minister will make herself available to appear before the Senate in the near future.

[English]

Hon. Jim Quinn: Senator Gold, regardless of the outcome of the vote on a pre-study for Bill C-11 — and, I would add, Bill C-13 — would you agree to make arrangements for members of the Transport and Communications Commitee and, I would add, as well, members of the Official Languages Committee to receive, when we return from next week’s recess, a copy of the technical briefing binders and any other briefing material supplied by government when reviewing legislation? I would find it vastly more valuable than that of a technical brief and a PowerPoint deck. If the main point of a pre-study is to be informed, why wouldn’t the government provide committee members with this information, regardless of the outcome of these pre-study votes?

Senator Quinn: Senator Gold, you mentioned in your replies to various questions that committees are masters of their own procedures. Would you support an amendment to these motions to leave it up to each committee to determine how to prioritize these pre-studies in order to better balance their workloads and ensure that committees are masters of their own proceedings, especially given that these are pre-study proposals that will undoubtedly continue to be studied when and if they land here from the other place?

Senator Gold: Such an amendment would be quite unnecessary, Senator Quinn, with respect. The operating principle in this Parliament is that government bills and government legislation receive priority over others. We have a process in place, through Selection and Administration, to provide for the allocation of committee spots and the priority to be given appropriately, and it is for the committee, once it is seized of a mandate, to decide how to organize its work. Such an amendment is something that simply would be unnecessary in this regard. The Senate and the committees have all the tools they need.

Senator Gold: Let me take both of your questions in turn.

Our committees are the masters of their own procedure. If this motion passes, the committee will decide who it wants to hear and when. It will certainly want to hear from ministers and officials, and it may very well want to hear from witnesses that are otherwise at present in the other place. It may have a different set of witnesses, but that’s in the prerogative of the Senate committees.

What we do best, though — and what I fully hope we do in this and every case — is to provide a more rigorous study, a less partisan study. That’s what we are known for, and I certainly expect us to continue in that honourable tradition.

In response to your second question, I never said that it’s our problem that it is a minority Parliament. Minority parliaments are a very regular feature of our Canadian parliamentary system, as we all know. The reality is that in a minority situation, things are not in the exclusive control of the government. It’s not only that they need to find dancing partners not only to pass legislation but to literally get them out of second-reading debate, where they are often obstructed by opposition doing their job as they see fit, just step by step.

Those of you who sat in the other place and are familiar with the rules know that their rules are different than our rules. Things do not necessarily move as globally and effectively there as here.

Finally, in a minority Parliament, there are opposition days. There are many days in the month devoted exclusively to the agendas, motions and priorities of opposition parties.

When you put all of that together, it may be satisfying from a partisan point of view and it may be partly felt from a principled point of view that somehow it’s the government’s fault that things don’t get moved as quickly as they would in a majority Parliament — especially a majority Parliament that is not averse to using closure. However, the reality is that we can’t control what happens there. We can only do our best to do our work as we see fit.

Again, we have the tools to apply ourselves to use our committee talent and resources to dig into this important bill so that when it does arrive here, we can add that much more value and do so in a responsible way that is less encumbered by the constraints of time and committee capacity.

Hon. David Richards: Senator Gold, would you take a question, please?

Senator Gold: Unfortunately, I do not agree with you or with that suggestion. Senator, you know how much I respect the Supreme Court, our judges and the importance of that ruling. It’s all well and good to quote from the reference, but I encourage you to read the debates dealing with Confederation and everything that has been written about the Senate. I also encourage you to reflect on the many roles that the Senate plays.

I would also refer you to the text of the Constitution of 1867. Why does the Constitution give the Senate the same legislative power, except for appropriation bills retained by the House of Commons, if the Senate’s only role is to wait for a bill to be introduced? We have had the constitutional power to legislate on our own initiative since 1867. Bill C-10 was thoroughly studied and debated in this chamber, because although we had not finished our deliberations, it arrived in the Senate with amendments, so it would not be all that radical to say that we are doing our part and accomplishing the work that is expected of us.

Senator Gold: I find that I’m having to repeat myself all too often. In my speech, I cited several examples of studies carried out in previous Parliaments, including when your government was in power. We conducted several pre-studies that went well beyond budget issues. I maintain that I have a very good understanding of the Senate’s role. What we have before us is a motion to grant us the time and the opportunity to use the tools at our disposal, according to our rules, and to do our job. With that, I rest on my statement.

(At 4 p.m., pursuant to the order adopted by the Senate on May 5, 2022, the Senate adjourned until 2 p.m., tomorrow.)

Hon. Leo Housakos: Senator Gold, I listened carefully to your case for asking for a pre-study on Bill C-11. I must say that this cannot possibly have been your idea because I know you to be a reasonable man.

Pre-study in the Senate is not a tool to be used lightly. It is a tool that is available to us when there is an urgent public need or when it is of urgent public interest. I haven’t heard anywhere in your statement any compelling case that Bill C-11 somehow responds to some kind of urgent public interest.

My understanding and recollection is that this government received a mandate in the fall of 2021. It recalled Parliament prior to the end of 2021 — an urgent, pressing public issue that they tabled the legislation over in the House only at the end of February.

Furthermore, I also want to highlight that we are in a situation right now in the other place where — for all intents and purposes — for the last little while, the government has a majority parliamentary standing in the House where, again, if a bill were of such urgent public concern, we would have seen the House deal with that issue urgently.

When we have had pre-studies of bills in the past, they have usually been supply bills or they have been in response to an urgent public need that deals with a crisis and we needed to get monies out the door quickly. The government makes a compelling case, and usually both houses, in those instances, acquiesce, take on our responsibilities and exercise that tool of pre-study.

The government has been in power for seven years, with a majority government for four and a half. They didn’t table legislation dealing with this telecommunications issue until the fall of 2020. Now, they are tabling legislation knowing full well that there was no way we would deal with this legislation in the manner that we had highlighted at the end of the last debate on this issue.

There was a consensus among all our colleagues that this bill needed a long, in-depth study. It was a controversial bill that satisfied certain sectors in our society and dissatisfied others, requiring a fulsome, robust debate and discussion.

For all intents and purposes, we have no more than three to four sitting weeks. We are all well aware of the challenges we face in terms of resources and the capacities of our committees to be able to sit more than they are currently. Therefore, the question I have is — knowing full well that this bill has what is far from consensus from stakeholders in our society — do you believe, pre-study or not, that this government will somehow get this bill out of the House of Commons and the Senate before we adjourn for the summer?

Senator Gold: Thank you for your question.

I won’t repeat myself; I know others are waiting to ask me questions. I will give notice that I will continue answering questions, but I will not go until four o’clock.

I will not repeat what I said. I think this is a government priority. This government is entitled to advance its priorities and objectives. Pre-study, I think, is a responsible tool we can use to do the work for which we were summoned.

With regard to your further question about the time that may remain in our sitting, we are getting ahead of ourselves. We are here to debate a pre-study and not what the ultimate path of this legislation may be.

Senator Gold: Thank you for the question. As I tried to make it clear in my speech, and as the motion makes clear, there is no reporting deadline. That was to address whatever concerns or — dare I say — suspicions there might be that this is just a Trojan horse so we can ram it through at the end when it arrives at the last minute. That is not the intention of the government. Quite the contrary.

As I said in my speech, once the bill arrives here, whether the pre-study is still ongoing — and let’s hope it gets here while the pre-study is still ongoing, because that means we will get it earlier rather than later, which would be our hope — but once the bill gets here, regardless of whether the pre-study is ongoing or completed, it will then have to go through — and properly so — second-reading debate, and then it will be sent for committee study, and the committee will decide how long it needs to study the bill that we have received, and then it will go to third-reading debate.

As I said, Senator Lankin, I appreciate the question, and that pathway can only be determined and discussed amongst leaders. Ultimately, the Senate pronounces on that and decides, just through the normal operation of our rules of debate and the like, how long the process of second-reading debate, committee study and third-reading debate will be.

I hope that answers your question.

Senator Patterson: Thank you for that. Senator Gold, this is perhaps a little bit of a wrinkle on Senator Quinn’s question, but you just justified having a pre-study of Bill C-11 so that members of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications will have a better opportunity to understand its content. Could this goal of improving the understanding of a bill not be better accomplished by a briefing, which could be available to all senators and not just members of the Transport and Communications Committee?

Hon. Dennis Glen Patterson: Senator Gold, you got my attention by putting to us today that the alternative to pre-studying Bill C-11 and another equally controversial bill you have given notice of is to wait and do nothing. Senator Gold, you know we have very limited committee time due to the current hybrid situation. We have, at a quick count, about two dozen Senate public bills that need consideration by our committees.

Instead of waiting and doing nothing, why don’t we devote our precious and scarce committee time to giving those thoughtful Senate public bills the consideration they deserve in our committees? Would that not be a very useful alternative to waiting and doing nothing?

Senator Gold: Thank you for your question. I was referring to doing nothing with regard to this bill, senator. I have utmost respect for the Senate, for the public bills and the studies that senators do that are not government business, and that’s just a fact.

However, it is also a fact that our primary constitutional obligation is to review government legislation, and that is what the Senate was set up to do in 1867. This is a point that has been made not only by me but by many others in this chamber, and, indeed, it is reflected in the priority that we have decided to give to government legislation when there is competition for committee time, and government matters and public bills are both competing for the same spot.

It is clearly the case that government matters take priority, and that is in no way to denigrate the important work that is done by senators and committees on public bills and studies.