Senator Plett: As I mentioned earlier, I oppose this motion for the same reasons that I opposed the previous one. I find it strange that people who one day say we should not do this or we should only do it under certain circumstances, and then when it comes time to show that they really mean that, they stand and vote completely contrary to what they have said previously.

But for the record, allow me to recap very briefly. As I said earlier, colleagues, pre-studies are a legitimate tool available for the Senate to use when utilized for the right reasons. We didn’t vote on whether or not we support Bill C-13 just now. We voted on whether or not we should waste the Senate’s valuable time doing something that will have no bearing on us passing the bill, none.

I debated with a few during the break, and it was clear that people were thinking they were voting in favour of Bill C-13 by voting against a pre-study. In no way is that the case. As I said, pre-studies are a legitimate tool available for the Senate to use when utilized for the right reasons. But this motion for a pre‑study on Bill C-11 does not meet that bar for three reasons:

The government is not requesting a pre-study in order to seek our advice on amendments; their mind is made up. The government is not requesting a pre-study in order to draw from a specific expertise in the Senate; they believe that they are the only house that has this expertise. The government is not requesting a pre-study in order to meet a court-imposed deadline or other urgent situation. This bill meets none of these conditions.

Colleagues, we have a responsibility to the Senate to vote based on criteria. We didn’t do that five minutes ago. This bill meets none of these conditions, which have been the convention when requesting pre-studies. Instead, both the government in the other place and the Government Representative right here seem intent on bypassing sober second thought in order to rush bills through unnecessarily. We hear over and over again from this government leader, right here, “These are the government’s priorities, and we need to rush these through.” Then he says, “Let’s do a pre-study, but let’s take our time. But let’s get it done by this date.”

Colleagues, I must say that I find Senator Gold’s message a bit confusing on this matter. On the one hand, he tells us that the pre-studies have nothing to do with rushing the bills, and the Senate can take all the time it wants. Then he adds:

To be clear, the Senate ultimately decides how many days and weeks it chooses to spend on second reading, on committee stage and on third reading of a government bill.

Here we are, one day away from June 1. We have at best 30‑days left in one month, and we are not going to be here all of those 30 days because we are only here a maximum of 4 days a week, so we have 28 days left.

But then in the next breath, Senator Gold tells us:

. . . it is important to understand that, should Bill C-11 be delayed, hundreds of millions of dollars targeted for allocation to Canadian content and Canadian creators of content would be lost.

That is a misrepresentation of facts. That would not be lost. It may not be there right now.

A delay would perpetuate the void in the Broadcasting Act for minority and marginalized communities.

And then:

For those who may argue that there is no urgency in passing Bill C-11 and that it is not time-sensitive, again, I would respectfully disagree. In my view, depriving Canadian artists of deserved, earned income and tacitly permitting the absence of Canadian content in our broadcasting is an urgent, time-sensitive issue, and it is also a priority of this government.

Along with 100 other priorities that they have.

This is exactly why we are suspicious, colleagues, of the government. Is this bill urgent or not? How can they say, “Oh, take all the time you want, but remember, people are starving while you nitpick at the bill?”

Colleagues, I agreed with Senator Dasko when she made the following statement, and we saw how Senator Dasko voted just a few minutes ago:

My concern with Bill C-11 is that I fear we will be doomed to this inadequate process and its shortcomings and that we will not conduct the proper investigation we need on Bill C-11, and we have no assurances that a regular committee study would follow from our pre-study. With Bill C-11, the ideal process, in my view, would be for us to take into account all the learnings from the House of Commons committee, their proceedings and their report, and build from there.

Colleagues, that is exactly what we should be doing. As I stated earlier, we should have defeated the pre-study on Bill C-13. We should defeat this motion and get back to doing the important work of the Senate. Thank you.