Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): Your Honour, I want to start off by thanking the Government Representative in the Senate for his collaboration today. I want to thank Senators Saint-Germain, Cordy and Tannas for agreeing to what Senator Gold now put into his amendment. It’s great when we can work together and make deals, and I believe that we have done that. I believe that the Senate, during this time over the last week, has shown the absolute need for this chamber. I would say that this chamber did a much better job on the Emergencies Act than they did in the other place.

I believe overall the collaboration here is much better than it is in the other place, and so I thank all honourable senators. I believe that the reason the Prime Minister came to his senses and revoked the Emergencies Act was because of the debate going on here in the Senate. I believe that cooler heads prevailed, and they saw the senselessness of having an Emergencies Act when there was no emergency.

However, we are tasked, as Senator Gold says, with studying this as a committee. We can say all we want that this is the way it should be — that this is the way a committee should be struck. When the act was struck, we did not have the kind of a Senate that we do now. We had a Senate that was basically made up of two political parties: the Conservative Party of Canada and the Liberal Party of Canada.

When they struck the Act, saying that there needed to be a senator in the chamber from all parties that were being represented in the House of Commons, they believed those would be the Conservative Party of Canada and the Liberal Party of Canada. It doesn’t matter what we say about the Senate now. That is what they believed at that time because that is the type of a Senate that we had.

So we now have a different type of a Senate, and we just simply decide to interpret what these people back in the 1980s wrote. Be that as it may, we live in — as they say — new and interesting times.

I’m always troubled when our government leader here refers to how they voted in the other house and always forgets to talk about the numbers of votes and the debates.

The fact of the matter is that the Conservative house leader in the other place came forward with a very, very reasonable amendment to what the government was proposing. The government had proposed that the two smallest groups in the house take the co-chairs. They did it for one reason and one reason only. They were trying to exclude the Conservative Party of Canada from being one of the co-chairs there. It was evident. Nobody can deny that. They did a good job of that. They browbeat Jagmeet Singh as the Prime Minister did with his threat of a confidence vote. Here again is something the leader failed to mention when he talked about how the other house had voted. He failed to mention that a minority Parliament threatened an election if another group would not support his demands.

Last night, the other place voted down our house leader’s amendment. Not with all the parties; with two parties. The Bloc — bless them for it — were given a co-chair position by the governing party, and they were willing to give up that co-chair position because they thought the right thing would be that the Conservatives have at least one co-chair. They were prepared to give up their co-chair position so that the Conservatives in the Senate could then have the co-chair.

For the Bloc to give that up obviously took a little bit of doing. That isn’t being mentioned here. What isn’t being mentioned here is that we have a government in the other house that is trying to take away the rights of a party that got more votes in the last election and in the election before than any other party. Yet, they’re not supposed to have a co-chair position. Why? Because the government is afraid of what is going to come forward if all of sudden the Conservatives have too many people and too much power in a committee, which they should have as the official opposition.

Let me tell you, colleagues, we are going to accept this motion — this amendment — on division, but we will accept what Senator Gold has brought forward because I really believe Senator Gold has done his job in trying to reach an amicable solution. I appreciate him for that. As I said, I appreciate the three other leaders collaborating and saying they agree that we should have that.

I do not believe we’re getting what we should be getting, but listen, you don’t always get what you think you should be getting or what’s fair. In this case, that is my belief.

I don’t want the words that I am saying here about the other place to be a reflection of what I believe in this place. I believe we did a good job. I believe we did a great job on both sides of the debate. I listened to senators on both sides of the debate, and we had good arguments here. At the end of the day — as I said — I believe the Prime Minister was reading the tea leaves and said, “I’m better off withdrawing this before I get 45 or 46 senators all of sudden voting the wrong way in the Senate.” We’re going to take credit for that. Whatever you say, you can’t take that credit away from us.

I can stand here and say it’s us. I can stand here and say it was Senator Wells’s speech or my speech that turned the tide, and we’ll take credit. We’re politicians. Justin Trudeau can come along and tell us why he actually did it. Until he does, we’ll take the credit, colleagues.

Having said that, thank you Senators Gold, Saint-Germain, Cordy and Tannas for your collaboration here today. I think it goes a long way in showing how we want to work together, but I do not want anybody to believe that for one second I accept what the Liberal Party of Canada and the government tried to do in that other place and, as a matter of fact, got away with it.

On that note, I do apologize to you, Senator Gold, that I cannot vote in favour. However, we will allow this to go on division.

Thank you very much, colleagues.