Hon. Bernadette Clement: This question concerning Roxham Road is for Senator Gold, Government Representative in the Senate.

Senator Gold, hundreds of asylum seekers have been bused to my city of Cornwall, Ontario, from Quebec, where they stayed in hotels and received supports like health care, language classes, settlement services, education and more. Despite the uncertainty and poor communication from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada — IRCC — the municipality and local organizations have worked overtime to help and support these very welcome newcomers to our community.

Now things are even more uncertain. Senator Gold, Deputy Chief Vince Foy of the Cornwall Police Service told my office he expects human smuggling to increase. There is a risk that organized crime groups will exploit desperate people who might cross the St. Lawrence River in unsafe conditions.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll continue to say it: Municipalities must be treated as partners. They were not consulted or adequately communicated with while Roxham Road was open. Now that it’s closed, what is the plan for collaboration and consultation with municipalities and local organizations? What will the government do to support communities like Cornwall, which is facing new challenges like human smuggling? What will be done for the newcomers already here?

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): The answer is no. The specific cost of the room that is referenced includes more than one room, as colleagues would know, and that includes the security who stayed in this set of rooms. This is the Prime Minister of Canada at the Queen’s funeral, and it was necessary for the Prime Minister to have the appropriate security, as you would fully expect.

As always, the government has made every effort in this regard to ensure that the spending on official trips is responsible and transparent.

Senator Gold: Well, it’s important to repeat facts in the face of repeated claims that aren’t factual, colleagues.

The fact is, our economy is strong and able to absorb these investments. Yes, it increases spending, but it’s not reckless spending. It’s intelligent, focused, targeted and purposeful spending. The fact that our economy is doing as well as it is is a function of the spending and investments of this government over the past number of years. Now is the time, because the world won’t wait.

Senator Cormier: As I’m sure you’re aware, there’s a francophone newspaper in your province called Le Gaboteur that is the only French-language newspaper in the entire province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Like other media in official language minority communities, this newspaper plays a very important role in keeping the public informed.

Senator Manning, do you think that the committee that will be studying Bill C-18 should pay particular attention to its impact on the media in official language minority communities, and perhaps improve the bill so that media outlets like Le Gaboteur can benefit from the agreements that will be reached under this legislation?

[English]

Senator Housakos: My question is a follow-up to Senator Cardozo’s questions.

Senator Manning, as you know, Senator Cardozo makes the parallel between us senators and government officials. We’re not government officials — we’re parliamentarians, for starters. Our role is to keep government officials to account — like the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, and the government.

Your speech touched a lot on fairness and small players, as did the question from Senator Cormier. When we look at the Canada Media Fund, we look at the money they sent to the CBC. In addition to the $1.4 billion, we allow that big player to take — I won’t say steal — advertising money away from competition in the marketplace. Now we have the government who also claims it wants to create a fair, equitable system and help the small operator. The CRTC — these gatekeepers — have approved Rogers buying up Shaw — one giant buying up another giant. How does that sound —

Senator Cotter: I’ll request it, yes.

Senator Plett: The answer changes. It was one room; now it’s multiple rooms. Why didn’t the Prime Minister say that months ago, that it was multiple rooms that he had used?

Last fall, leader, I questioned you repeatedly about who had stayed in this $6,000-a-night hotel room. If the Prime Minister had answered the question himself at any point, he would not have had to put you in the position of defending the indefensible, which you again have done a number of times today.

Instead, as I said to you a few weeks ago regarding the foreign interference allegations, no one can get a straight answer out of this man. This is the government that once claimed to have set a higher bar, leader, for openness and transparency. Instead, using the visit of an American President to try to bury this story is probably the lowest of the low in terms of transparency.

Leader, yesterday the Trudeau government claimed that this $6,000 room included rooms for security and that saying otherwise was misinformation — and it took them months to decide that.

How can that explanation be trusted when the Prime Minister has lied on numerous occasions? How can that explanation be trusted when the Prime Minister could have said from the start but chose not to do so? Isn’t that misinformation?

Lastly, leader, as I said yesterday, when will Justin Trudeau realize he has lost the confidence of Canadians, and step down and call a federal election?

Senator Manning: Thank you, Senator Dasko. I guess it’s a fact, as I said in my comments, that it comes down to the money — where the money is being put. We put a fair amount of money into traditional media. We go online. There are opportunities on both sides.

Again, we go back to Bill C-11. We heard from many people with regard to online versus the traditional off-line. I think, again, as we go forward, the numbers of people who are tuning in to traditional media as we understand it are down. They’re down across the board. We have small newspapers across the country — hundreds of newspapers across the country — that have closed up. It seems like our media coverage — our opportunity to tune in to media — is getting smaller and smaller. Therefore, I think we need to find a way at least to make sure that the smaller communities get the opportunity to advertise what they have and tell the stories of a small, rural Canada. I think that’s where, hopefully, some parts of this bill will find their way.

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: Do we have agreement? I hear a “no.”

(On motion of Senator Clement, debate adjourned.)

[Translation]

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Carignan, P.C., seconded by the Honourable Senator Housakos, for the second reading of Bill S-229, An Act to amend the Language Skills Act (Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick).

Hon. Raymonde Gagné (Legislative Deputy to the Government Representative in the Senate), pursuant to notice of March 29, 2023, moved:

That, when the Senate next adjourns after the adoption of this motion, it do stand adjourned until Tuesday, April 18, 2023, at 2 p.m.

Senator Anderson: Based on my research, the only way to fix this bill is to go back to the beginning. Somehow, the people who were intended to inform this bill were not part and parcel of this bill. They were engaged after the fact, and there was no meaningful consultation. As an Indigenous person regarding an Indigenous bill on reconciliation, I fail to understand how the bill could fail to meet that.

(On motion of Senator Brazeau, debate adjourned.)

[Translation]

Hon. Brent Cotter: Honourable senators, I wish to speak briefly in support of Bill C-228 sponsored by Senator Wells, with friendly criticism by Senator Yussuff. I do so with a small amount of trepidation.

An earlier speaker this afternoon, whom I won’t name now, highlighted the risk of using the word “fairness” in our speeches. I raced through my own, and I see that there are five such occasions. I haven’t had the time to remove them, but this is a “fairness” warning.

I will limit my remarks to statements of principle on the topic of Bill C-228 and a second, related topic that I will address in the remarks.

I would like to begin by just observing that I think the central question at the core of this bill is how we value, respect and balance the respective contributions of capital and labour to a business enterprise. Before I do that, I would like to share with you what I think is a metaphor for this theme.

Last Friday, I had the honour of attending a speech delivered by President Biden in the other place, as well as an outstanding speech delivered by Speaker Furey that honoured him, our Senate and each of us individually, and I want to acknowledge that publicly.

Hon. Frances Lankin: Thank you, Senator Housakos, for putting forward your views. I would like to, in my question, set aside the matter of the CBC because I think there are many other points of debate that come into it, and that polarized view held among some of us in this chamber won’t be resolved through this particular bill.

I spent a number of years as chair of the Ontario Press Council and then the inaugural chair of the National NewsMedia Council. It has been my experience that any newspaper that brings forward critical arguments, whether it is of one political party’s positions or another, is named “fake news.” I have heard it many times from across the floor as well.

Here is what I want to understand from you: The voices of those small community newspapers that many of us in rural Ontario and across Canada rely on have largely been cancelled out and have not been able to have the resources and the staffing to do local investigative journalism. They rely on The Canadian Press and other feeds.

Your proposal doesn’t address how this issue will get resolved. Surely some of the $81 million is better than nothing at all. Could you speak to what the solution is, please?

Senator Moncion: You talked about the education sector. Several teachers came to talk to us about the importance of making sure there’s nuance to this clause when it comes to the education system. We know that sometimes some children need to be restrained, if you will, because they get extremely violent and they lose control of their emotions.

I don’t know whether you have any comments to make on these restrictions that seem to concern the education sector.

Senator Dasko: Excellent introduction. Thank you for your comments, Senator Manning. I wonder how you would respond to the fact that the top three sources of news for Canadians off-line are the same three sources of news for Canadians online. What, in fact, has happened is that the revenue that went to the off-line organizations has now shifted to the platforms where Canadians go online. Essentially, Canadians are still using and still interested in what we might call the traditional media, but they are accessing these media increasingly online and not getting the revenue for it.

I wonder what your response to that would be. It’s not as if Canadians are abandoning traditional media. Of course, online, they can get a lot of other sources, but they’re still accessing those same sources online for news.

Hon. Leo Housakos: Government leader, let’s stay focused on the facts. You talk about all of the wonderful things this government has done with the economy. A few days ago in The New York Times, there was an article — written by our strongest friends and allies to the south — that gave a gold medal to Canada because the government has achieved some great things: We have become the world’s number one money-laundering nation in the world. Forty billion dollars per year is being laundered through Canada by criminal networks; oligarchs; terrorist organizations; and various other friends, families and agents of authoritarian regimes that are coming to influence our institutions and our nation. The new title for Canada, according to The New York Times, on March 25, is that we have become experts at “snow washing.”

Could you please answer me in simple English terms? What action, if any — I certainly haven’t seen any — has this government taken to mitigate this terrible activity that’s going on in our country?

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Money laundering is a crime, and we have laws against those crimes. We have provincial police forces, the RCMP and the Attorneys General in all of the provinces to enforce those laws.

This is a serious issue that has been raised on a number of occasions in this chamber with regard to what specific steps might be taken outside of specific investigations of which, obviously, no comment can be, or should be, made. With regard to any further legislative measures, I will have to make inquiries.

This remains a serious problem in a number of different sectors, and this government, like all governments, is committed to addressing it.

Some Hon. Senators: Hear, hear.

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Harder, P.C., seconded by the Honourable Senator Bellemare, for the second reading of Bill C-18, An Act respecting online communications platforms that make news content available to persons in Canada.