Senator Bernard: I want to raise the issue of race privilege. The sentiment in several of the speeches that we’ve heard on this debate have alluded to and spoken to the deep divide in this country as though it’s something new. It is not new. Deep divide has been felt by many in this country for generations.

I’m wondering about the role of privilege, the invisibility of privilege and how we make this more visible.

You and several people have also raised the lack of action. It’s given me pause to think about how privilege has led to this escalation, led us to where we are now, to this debate we’re having at this moment in time.

But I don’t think there’s been an analysis of privilege. My concern is that privilege will be used to ignore the privilege that is actually at play and has been at play during this blockade.

I think that privilege has allowed the convoy participants to act without consequences, that entitlement of participants allowed the occupation to escalate past the point of a demonstration, to the point that democracy was indeed threatened and residents’ rights were infringed upon.

Senator Plett, I would like to ask your thoughts on the role that privilege played and how privilege led to the use of the Emergencies Act to deal with this blockade. Thank you.

Senator Plett: I would certainly agree with that, Senator Carignan. I believe he has disdain for anybody that he believes is a little bit of a lower rank than he is. I find it difficult because if ever there is a person who portrays the sense of privilege, it is the Prime Minister.

Yet we have people who are supporting him when they, in the same breath, say they disagree with the sense of entitlement that people have. Here we have a Prime Minister who portrays that every day. He did before COVID. He initiated the fact that he did not want to be in Parliament.

I will refer back. I don’t do this to make political points, and I’m serious even if people will not believe it. The Prime Minister, prior to Justin Trudeau, Senator Carignan — you know that he had a disdain for travelling to any foreign meeting when the House was sitting because he had so much respect for the House that he believed he should be there when the House is sitting.

We now have a Prime Minister who does anything not to be there because he has a complete disdain for Parliament, a complete disdain, in my opinion, for democracy and, quite frankly, a complete disdain for over half of our country.