Senator McPhedran: Thank you very much. I want to go back to something I referenced in my speech last evening, and thank you very much for your communication when you acknowledged that you had listened to my speech. You then will recall I referenced a Speaker’s ruling on rule 12-5. I won’t go into all of the detail, but there is one very specific statement I’m going to ask you to interpret, based on the position you have taken about group ownership of the individual member’s position. It says that if a senator withdraws from a caucus, rule 12-5 would cease to apply. The senator would retain any then current committee membership, unless removed either through a report of the Committee of Selection or a substantive motion adopted by the Senate.

Senator Housakos: Senator Quinn, those are all very good points, but with all due respect, the truth of the matter is Canadians did not put you on a committee. I’ve been put on a couple of committees by the Conservative Senate caucus. I was not put on those committees by Canadian citizens.

If tomorrow morning I philosophically change my point of view and I decide to join, for example the Canadian Senators Group or the Progressive Senate Group, then at that particular point in time I have to respect the group that sent me to do work on that particular committee on their behalf.

Now, I reiterate that your privilege as a senator is not violated. You and I can go and make representations and participate on any committee, but the moment you serve as a chair or deputy chair, at steering or you have a voting right on the committee, again, you were sent there. Your accountability is to your group on a weekly basis.

Unfortunately, there is no mechanism yet in this institution where we are accountable to the people of Canada. We don’t run for elections every four years. Furthermore, even when it comes to the Prime Ministers who appointed us here, they don’t have much accountability either to us in regard to the fact that we’re here with our privilege until the age of 75.

The self-discipline that this place imposes with the groups that we choose to philosophically associate with, that is where we get some semblance of discipline and organization. You’re right that if you make a change of group, you would think about that from a philosophical point of view, not from a self-serving point of view.

If tomorrow morning I leave my group and it costs me the chair of a committee, that chair is not mine. I would like to think the committees I have served on as chair over the years is where I have some expertise and that is why my caucus sent me there. The moment I cease to be a Conservative and I go to another group, that other group that I represent will send me to do work that that group deems necessary on their behalf.

Again, it’s difficult, because we’re not like every other Parliament. We’re uniquely different because of the fact that we’re an appointed body. We’re appointed to positions on committees by groups that represent us. It’s not an election. For example, we don’t elect every single committee seat and chair and deputy chair in this chamber. The reason we don’t is because eventually it will become a dictatorship on the part of the largest group, for example.

Historically, in this country there have been many instances where the Liberals had the vast majority of 70 or 80 seats and the Conservatives had dwindled, and there were instances where the Liberal caucus had dwindled to a small number.

By the way, I would like to inform every member here — because every independent senator that comes here thinks there’s a problem with the Senate rules — this place, ultimately, is a place of the majority. The reason we’ve survived as a coherent body is that majority group, when it becomes so big, if they don’t understand that we will only be credible by the manner in which that majority treats the minority, then the place falls apart.

I reiterate that at the beginning of 2016 when a small minority came in here, which today is becoming a plurality and a majority, the majority didn’t like it, but we knew we had to accommodate that minority. I’ve been here long enough to know that today I’m in the minority. Five or seven years from now, many of you will be in that minority. That’s just the nature of democracy. How we treat each other is fundamentally important.