The Hon. the Speaker: In my opinion, the “yeas” have it.

And two honourable senators having risen:

An Hon. Senator: One hour.

Some Hon. Senators: Yea.

Some Hon. Senators: Nay.

The Hon. the Speaker: All those opposed will please say “nay.”

The Hon. the Speaker: The vote will take place at 9:10 p.m. Call in the senators.

Speaker’s ruling adopted on the following division:

Hon. Leo Housakos: I rise on a point of order calling upon rule 2-9(1) and rule 2-9(2) in Chapter Two of the Rules of the Senate. My point of order, Your Honour, deals with a Senate intervention that has, in my opinion, created a dispute between two senators. During the course of debate in this chamber, we have a senator who, in my opinion, was maligned and injured. In particular, that is covered under rule 2-9(2).

Your Honour, throughout the years that I’ve been in this chamber — now going on my fifteenth year — I have never seen this degree of partisanship and vicious personal attacks, which I’ve seen over the last little while. This is a place of Parliament. We’ve had some very acrimonious debates throughout the years. I sat in that chair as Speaker when many of those acrimonious debates took place between the government on one side and the opposition on the other. Let me tell you, there weren’t any doves in the Liberal opposition at the time. There were some fierce debaters — people like Senator Mercer, Senator Fraser and Senator Mitchell. Senator Cordy, at the time, was pretty good at doing her job as the official opposition.

We would sit late into the month of June, and we would have the opposition doing what they thought they needed to do on behalf of Canadians. We had the majority in this chamber, at the time, doing what we thought we had a mandate to do by the elected people. Yet, at no point in time did we impugn motive. At no point in time did we accuse leaders of the official opposition of lying or misleading. That is what happened this evening, Your Honour.

We had a member of this chamber on their feet, whom the Speaker had recognized — an honourable member in this place — and in the heat of partisan political debate, we know there is heckling, and sometimes we get carried away, but I think it is wholly unacceptable to have a member of this chamber speak disparagingly of another member, particularly calling into question their integrity and stating that the point of order that this particular individual was articulating at the time was a lie.

I know you’ve recently undertaken deep reflection regarding what is parliamentary language and what isn’t, Your Honour. I expect that we will have a ruling on that at the same speed that we had a ruling on how we use time allocation.

There has also been a tradition — and correct me if I am wrong, Your Honour — that when a colleague points disparagingly at another during debate, the Speaker would call them to order. That was the practice when I arrived here. That was the practice I exercised when I was the Speaker. I know, Your Honour, that you do grant us a great deal of latitude in debate and in the rules of this chamber, but I think it’s incumbent, colleagues, on all of our parts here, that we can disagree on issues. We’re not on the same side of the political spectrum, despite the fact that there is an overwhelming number here who are independent. The truth of the matter is we are on different sides of all the debates. That’s our job. That’s what we come here to do. We are here to do that vigorously.

I am one who loves vigorous debate. I love engaging in vigorous debate, but I also encourage vigorous debate back and a clash of ideas. If I cross that line, I expect the Speaker to call me to order, and I will be the first to apologize if I ever impugn the motive of any individual in this place, or if I ever show behaviour that is unbecoming of a senator.

I rise with hesitation, Your Honour. Going forward, if we don’t calm the temperatures down and start respecting decorum and the basic rules of this institution, debate will continue to really slide down the slippery slope.

It’s a point of order that’s important, and I leave it with you, Your Honour, to do what you see fit with it.

Hon. Julie Miville-Dechêne: I was very surprised by Senator Housakos’ point of order and Senator Carignan’s speech on the issue of respect. It is very rare on this side of the House — well, it doesn’t happen.

During Question Period, from where I sit, I always hear, generally speaking, noises and comments that show a consistent lack of respect for Senator Gold’s answers.

I’m telling you this because from where I am, I see everything. If there was some disrespect in the exchange that you’re talking about — which I doubt — that is something we see every day in QP, absolutely.

[English]

Hon. Claude Carignan: I agree with my colleague Senator Housakos. This chamber is an honourable place, an exemplary place in Canada where we debate respectfully. When we rise to express an opinion, present a point of view or, in this case, support a motion moved by the Leader of the Opposition, we expect our point of view to be listened to with respect. When the debate is over or the bells ring for a standing vote, we don’t expect anyone to cross the aisle, come see us, point their finger at us and argue in an intimidating manner. As Senator Housakos said, I’ve never seen anything like it in 14 years.

We must show respect for each other. We must respect each other’s opinions under the rules. We appealed your ruling. Honourable senators may not realize this, but your role is not the same as that of the Speaker of the House of Commons. Once the Speaker of the House of Commons delivers a ruling, it’s final. However, the Speaker of the Senate is a senator like any other. He has the right to his opinion and we have the right to ours. That is why senators have the right to appeal a Speaker’s ruling. The Speaker of the Senate is a senator like any other. He can even participate in debate and vote. The Speaker is a senator like any other and we have the right to express our disagreement without being threatened, intimidated or singled out. We must follow the rules. We must show respect for each other. We are an honourable chamber and we must behave in an honourable way in accordance with the rules of debate.

[English]

The Hon. the Speaker: Senator Housakos rose on a point of order. I hadn’t called you yet for debate.

Does any other senator wish to comment on Senator Housakos’ point of order?

[Translation]

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Your Honour, just a point of clarification. Am I not correct that since your ruling was just upheld, we’re actually now on debate on Motion No. 96? Am I correct?

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): I was not going to rise on this point of order. I was going to let you make a ruling. For some reason the government leader — which he is now hopefully going to be styled as forever and a day, and we will certainly be making that request to Internal Economy that everything is changed here, that he is now the government leader, because, of course, in your ruling you styled him as such — but that’s not what I’m speaking to.

Senator Gold just simply referenced my comments as somehow being relevant in this point of order. My comments that I made about Senator Gold were during my speech. He had the opportunity to debate those comments, and he did that forcefully and vigorously.

I said earlier today, Your Honour, I may not agree with Senate colleagues, but I will defend to the death your right to your opinion.

Senator Gold has an opinion of our conversation. I have a different opinion. I relayed to this chamber what my opinion was, and he relayed what his opinion was, and they were completely opposite. One of them clearly cannot be entirely correct, and the other one possibly entirely false. I’m not sure. I had an opinion of something, and he, according to what he is saying, had a different opinion.

That is not what this point of order at all, Your Honour, was related to. The exchange that Senator Gold and I had in this chamber was about a point of order that I legitimately raised on an issue that has been a long-festering issue for seven or eight years.

Senator Housakos and then Senator Carignan spoke to an issue that happened by other senators, not Senator Gold making disparaging comments possibly towards me. I take no exception to what Senator Gold said in any of his speech, and I hope he doesn’t take exception to what I said. But I hope, Your Honour, that you will entirely ignore the comments that Senator Gold just made in regard to this point of order because they were entirely irrelevant to this point of order.

[Translation]

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Honourable senators, I rise tonight to speak to Government Motion No. 96, which proposes to allocate a further six full hours of debate respecting the motion in response to the House’s message to the Senate on Bill C-11.

Colleagues, I’m moving this motion out of a sense of duty, not one of pleasure, but I also move this motion firm in the conviction that the government has acted properly and with the utmost respect for the Senate’s legislative process; firm in the conviction that we in the Government Representative Office, or GRO, have done so quite literally every step of the way; firm in the conviction that I am not proposing the curtailment of genuine debate; and firm in the conviction that it is necessary now to break through a clearly orchestrated pattern of deliberate obstruction so that we can finally move to a democratic vote.

The decision to apply time allocation to any item of government business is one I do not take lightly. I think I can say this with some credibility given that the GRO has not invoked time allocation before.

However, I am entirely comfortable that this is the responsible course of action before us. Tonight, I’m going to focus my remarks on two aspects of the issue that we in the GRO feel are important to underscore. First, I want to speak to the context and process that has brought us to this motion today. Second, I wish to address the mechanics of the motion and the purpose of Chapter Seven of our Rules, that is the chapter that provides for time allocation.

Let me begin with the context. Colleagues, in doing so, I want to bring you into my confidence. I want to share with you the reasoning behind several strategic decisions that we made in the GRO concerning the process around the study and debate of Bill C-11, including the exhaustive amount of time that this chamber has spent considering this bill.

Quite a long time ago, honourable senators, we in the GRO made the decision that, in dealing with this legislation, we would do our very best to try to shelter the work of the Senate from an overly charged, partisan political arena in the other place, and to try to do whatever we could to allow senators from all groups the opportunity to contribute constructively to the legislative process.

[Translation]

At the very beginning, as soon as the Senate received former Bill C-10, the bill’s sponsor, Senator Dawson, and I were very clear with the government that the Senate was going to take as much time as necessary to study the bill.

Despite what might have been transpiring among the political parties in the House of Commons, we made sure that the Senate took all the time that was necessary — I think we kept our word and then some — as of May 2022, with our proposal to conduct a pre-study in the Senate.

[English]

On May 31, 2022, the Senate adopted a motion authorizing the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications to undertake the pre-study on the subject matter of the bill. The committee was afforded all the necessary procedural authorities, including the ability to meet while the Senate was sitting or adjourned to maximize its time and ensure that a comprehensive work plan could be developed.

The committee did not hold its first meeting with witnesses until June 21, 2022, nearly three weeks after the original motion had been adopted. Having launched the pre-study, the GRO expended significant political capital at the highest level of government to secure the time that the Senate needed based upon a written agreement reached in June of last year with the Leader of the Opposition in this place, which was signed by all leaders, for a final third reading vote in November of 2022.

I have that agreement with me here today, colleagues, for anyone who might wish to confirm its authenticity. Paragraph 5 of the agreement stipulates:

With respect to the Senate’s consideration of Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts: [. . .] achievement of a 3rd reading Senate vote no later than Friday, November 18th, unless debate has collapsed earlier.

At the bottom of this agreement, one can see the signatures of Senators Tannas, Cordy, Saint-Germain and myself. It is also signed by Senator Plett, committing the Conservative Senate caucus in his capacity as leader of the official opposition.

As we all know, during the summer adjournment period, the Conservative Party of Canada selected a new leader. With that leadership, it was evident that the terms of the agreement would no longer be respected.

[Translation]

The bill was introduced at first reading in the Senate on June 21, 2022, so about eight months ago, and has been studied and debated extensively.

On September 21, 2022, the bill’s sponsor, Senator Dawson, began the second reading debate, and the bill was either debated or continued for 12 legislative session days after that, finally passing second reading in the Senate on October 25, 2022.

Between the months of June and December 2022, the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications held 31 meetings, including the pre-study and actual study of the bill, along with nine meetings for clause-by-clause study, for a total of 67 hours and 30 minutes.

[English]

The committee heard from nearly 140 witnesses from various backgrounds including traditional broadcasters and newer online platforms, leaders in the arts and cultural communities, academics and researchers, online content creators, Indigenous stakeholders, union leaders and government officials, as well as Canadians with disabilities and those in minority groups.

Throughout this process, I remained optimistic that the terms of the original agreement would be respected. However, while I do not know when the instruction was given to the opposition to break the Bill C-11 agreement, the Conservative leadership did not formally communicate to us that the agreement was no longer valid until very close to the November 18 deadline.

Colleagues, throughout the fall, I had regularly raised Bill C-11’s timeline at the leadership table. For many weeks, we got evasive responses. We had heard rumours and speculations of a potential breach, but we continued to have faith in the signed agreement until the very end. But with no agreement in place in November, we accepted, very reluctantly, to give the Senate more time through December and into the new year.

Following our return from the Christmas break, the Senate adopted Bill C-11 at third reading on February 2, 2023.

Honourable colleagues, I want to be clear and unequivocal with you. I did not accept the additional time for the benefit of the official opposition who, by November, were engaging in a full-out filibuster at the committee.

We chose to come to the terms of a new agreement because that was the only pathway that would ensure that senators operating independently of partisan objectives, and with a genuine desire to seek improvements to the bill, would have a genuine opportunity to do so at the clause-by-clause stage. Time allocation would have punished not only the filibustering senators, but also those senators working constructively. We simply were not prepared to do that. We did not wish to do that and we did not do that.

As I said, our goal from the beginning on Bill C-11 was to ensure that the process itself could unfold in as non-partisan a way as is possible, and that senators would be able to do their jobs, the jobs for which we were summoned here to do. We delivered on this. With a new agreement in place, amendments and subamendments were pulled. We managed to complete the process properly. The amended bill was sent back to the other place on February 2, 2023.

After a month, colleagues, of careful consideration and due diligence by the government, it provided its response to the Senate’s work by accepting 20 of the 26 amendments in total. It was sent back to this chamber with the support of the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québécois.

That now brings us to the message before us. I want to stress, upon receipt of the message and in keeping with my role as Government Representative, I consulted with the leadership of all groups in good faith to try to implement a constructive timetable to consider Bill C-11 at the message stage.

Upon receipt of the message from the other place, I made my expectations very clear that the Senate ought to have a thorough debate that would have had us vote on the motion by the end of last week. That has been in line with the Senate’s customary approach to the disposition of messages from the other place in a timely fashion.

Colleagues, let me put this in perspective for you. During the Forty-second and Forty-third Parliaments, the Senate spent an average of less than two sitting days debating messages from the House of Commons. That statistic includes several substantial and controversial bills, like Bill C-45, the Cannabis Act; Bill C-69 on environmental assessments; Bill C-48 on the oil tanker moratorium; Bill C-14 and Bill C-7 on medical assistance in dying and Bill C-6, which implemented immigration reforms, to name but a few.

Regrettably, despite this and the very strong precedent that has existed in terms of the times that we’ve devoted to messages at this stage of our process, I was neither able to yield an agreement on a vote by the end of last week, nor was I even provided with a hint of a signal on what the intentions were of the opposition, or on the numbers of speakers or amendments.

As I mentioned in an earlier speech today, colleagues, I raised this bilaterally with the Leader of the Opposition last week. It was made clear that there would be no agreement to get this resolved by the end of last week.

We also sought, as I mentioned as well, to have assurances on a similar timeline at our scroll discussions — again, radio silence, to no avail.

Instead, debate was adjourned by the opposition for two consecutive days last week without any speaker taking the floor. This is despite a full two-week break to prepare for debate, and the message from the House being public knowledge for more than a month.

It also is despite the fact that the Government Representative Office, or GRO, shared its procedural intentions in an open and transparent fashion with all Senate groups, including the text of the motion in response to the message and the text of a motion in amendment that was drafted in collaboration with Senator Tannas.

On Thursday, colleagues, we were treated to the all-too-familiar merry-go-round of amendment and subamendment, followed by another adjournment motion and a motion to adjourn the Senate, which took us into the night and disrupted other items of business that senators might have wished to address.

Had we decided to do nothing, colleagues, I suspect we would all be here today rinsing and repeating this sad, sorry state of affairs and sequence of events.

Colleagues, while I have tried to remain optimistic that common sense would prevail at this stage of the message, I’m not naive. I am not surprised given the public statements by the Leader of the Conservative Party urging senators to prevent this bill from passing.

The Leader of the Conservative Party in the other place in a video posted to Twitter on March 30 stated the following in relation to Bill C-11, after its adoption in the House of Commons:

We have some real free speech warriors there, led by Leo Housakos, the great Spartan warrior, who held the thing up in the Senate for almost a year — a good part of the year. It’s going back to the Senate right now. He’s going to fight like hell to stop it from passing it.

This is in addition to an active website entitled KillBillC11.ca, authorized in the name of Conservative Member of Parliament Rachael Thomas which calls upon the Senate to defeat the bill despite being duly passed by the elected House of Commons.

Let us not be naive about the context before us. There is an ongoing effort to kill this bill and to prolong this process for as long as possible for the sole purpose of partisan advantage.

As the context I have described shows, the GRO has been constructive. The record will show that the Senate conducted a considerably thorough study and successfully made numerous amendments to the bill. We have done nothing to curtail debate.

As the context also shows, we have also been on the receiving end of broken promises and deliberate procedural gamesmanship. This is where Chapter Seven of our Rules comes in, and this is where I turn our attention now.

With respect to the time allocation motion before us, it is important that we understand and that Canadians who are watching us understand exactly what it is that I am proposing.

The motion would provide for an additional six hours of debate, after which the Senate will be able to vote democratically on the subamendment by Senator MacDonald, the amendment by Senator Plett and the main motion that I spoke to last week. I don’t think there’s anything abusive about this proposition. In practice, there is ample time for every senator in the opposition caucus to speak up to their maximum allotted time, with the Leader of the Opposition receiving up to 30 minutes to speak under this motion.

Under this motion, every member of the opposition, and all senators, have 10 minutes to speak to this phase of the process, and the Leader of the Opposition has 30 minutes. The time that we now have to debate gives ample opportunity for each and every opposition senator, and others, to speak. Now, during the time-allocated order — the six-hour debate — normal speaking times will apply as part of the six-hour debate.

Conceptually, it is important to be clear about the purpose of time allocation, because it is a tool that may be used abusively but that may also be used very legitimately in context where a chamber is prevented from reaching a decision.

Colleagues, I would argue that Chapter Seven of the Rules of the Senate was created for cases just like this one: cases where there is a history of dilatory tactics, cases where the objective has become delay for delay’s sake, cases where the procedural intentions of a party are being withheld from colleagues and cases where there is an effort to kill legislation through procedural delay.

It’s true: Time allocation gets a bad rap, and that’s largely because of its heavy-handed use by successive majority governments to stifle genuine debate, including in this chamber. It is important to remind ourselves that the original purpose of time allocation was not only to allow a government majority to manage the finite time of a legislative chamber, but also for the legislative body itself to overcome the use of tactics deliberately geared at delaying the progress of government legislation.

In a paper entitled Sober Second Thinking: How the Senate Deliberates and Decides, Senator Harder explains:

. . . if excessive time allocation is to be reviled, so too should tactics of delay that stifle substantive policy debates. Time allocation and dilatory obstruction are two sides of the same coin. Unfortunately, under current Senate rules, absent time allocation, obstructionist senators can postpone votes by adjourning debate virtually indefinitely. Attempts to call for an immediate vote to move legislation forward can be filibustered, leading to stare-downs that can last for many days and monopolize the Chamber’s time.

Having been here for some years now, colleagues, I know exactly what that looks like. To name just a few examples, one needs only to think back to our debates around bills like Bill C-16 on transgender rights, Bill C-45 on cannabis legislation, Bill C-210 on a gender-neutral national anthem, Bill C-262 on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP, and Bill S-203 on ending the captivity of whales and dolphins.

In the same paper, Senator Harder further notes:

Ultimately, to use such delay tactics to impede legislative review is not sober second thinking. Senators engaging in such practice do not showcase the “complementary” legislative role that the Canadian Constitution requires the Senate to perform. At a pivotal time in the Senate’s history, such practice is also damaging to the institution’s culture, encouraging needless conflict and distracting the Chamber from its public purpose.

In a nutshell, colleagues, time allocation can be either curative or abusive, and context is everything. Now, I don’t know about you, but I do not feel like last Thursday’s round of bells was a particularly efficient use of the Senate’s time and publicly funded resources.

Moreover, colleagues, as precedent demonstrates, there is nothing extraordinary about time allocation. In fact, it has been regularly applied to various stages of government business — and in many instances under the previous government after little or no actual debate. However, since the Forty-second Parliament, both under myself and my predecessor, Senator Harder, time allocation has not been invoked once — not once on a single item of government business. I believe this has been a testament to our desire to find collaboration and consensus on moving the government’s legislative agenda forward in a timely manner. Regrettably, sadly, this is no longer the case with respect to Bill C-11.

Colleagues, you are undoubtedly going to hear from some in this chamber that invoking time allocation on a bill of this magnitude is paramount to stifling debate and not in keeping with the Senate’s role of sober second thought. Let me put this in historical perspective. The previous government, represented by the members opposite me, invoked time allocation on 22 separate occasions alone during the Forty-first Parliament — in some cases after only a single day of debate at a particular stage of a government bill.

In the case of Bill C-19, a bill which had sought to eliminate the long-gun registry and reflected an electoral commitment of the former government, Senator Carignan, then Deputy Leader of the Government, gave notice of a motion to allocate time after only a single day of debate at third reading, even before the critic was afforded an opportunity to speak. In justifying the need for time allocation, Senator Carignan outlined his perspective on April 3, 2012, as follows:

I believe that it was important to set a time limit, a sufficient amount of time in which senators could debate and express their opinions, as they were able to do previously at second reading. There have been many debates on both sides of this issue, but we should be able to end this debate, once and for all, within the time allocated so that we can pass this bill, ensure that the will of Canadians is translated into a reasonable and effective bill, and move on to other bills that are just as important to Canadian society.

Therefore, if we are to apply Senator Carignan’s logic, given the considerable debate this chamber has had on Bill C-11, the Senate ought to have the right in the face of procedural obstacles to have this bill adopted in a timely way to reflect the will of the elected house.

Indeed, our colleague Senator Plett made a very strong point that the time allocation process does indeed provide a window for senators to debate legislation in the face of apparent delay. On June 11, 2014, Senator Plett noted the following on a motion to time-allocate Bill C-23, known as Fair Elections Act, after only one day of debate at third reading. Senator Plett said:

I would like to say that in fact time allocation opens debate. We are now debating. We are debating time allocation. We will debate the motion. In fact, adjourning debate is stifling debate. That is what the opposition tries time and time again if they don’t have any other avenue — let’s adjourn this.

In the same speech, he later said, “When you can’t reach an agreement, you have to do something.”

Colleagues, for all these reasons, I believe now is the time to do something. The Government Representative Office, or GRO, has supported the Senate during Bill C-11’s legislative journey every step of the way. The GRO ensured that the senators operating in good faith could get their work done properly, and this was demonstrated time and time again, as I outlined earlier. Now, colleagues, I’m asking your support to bring this to a conclusion with six additional hours of debate and a democratic vote on the message from the House of Commons, a message supported by the government, the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québécois, all of whom campaigned on a platform to reform the Broadcasting Act, which is the subject of the message before us.

Colleagues, it is time to do something. Thank you for your kind attention.

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, the point of order that was raised by Senator Housakos and spoken to, so far, by two or three other colleagues is a very narrow point of order. I know we could be here for a much longer time listening to more comments, but I believe I’ve heard enough to take it under advisement. There is also an outstanding ruling which will be coming shortly pertaining to language in the chamber as well, but I believe I’ve heard enough for the night. Thank you, colleagues, for your input.

We return to debate on Motion No. 96.

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Gold, P.C., seconded by the Honourable Senator Gagné:

That, pursuant to rule 7-2, not more than a further six hours of debate be allocated for the consideration of the motion, as amended, to respond to the message from the House of Commons concerning the Senate’s amendments to Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts.

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: Senator Gold, will you answer questions?

Hon. Leo Housakos: I have a question for Senator Harder — I mean, Senator Gold. You’re interchangeable.

Hon. Leo Housakos (Acting Deputy Leader of the Opposition): I have a question for Senator Harder — I mean, Senator Gold. You’re interchangeable.

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): Honourable senators, I’m not sure how to start this. We have a government leader who is wanting to move a bill forward, who says, “I will answer one question and then I will not answer any more questions.”

Excuse me. Did you want to continue debate? Thank you.

Senator Gold said — and Hansard will show that he said — he would refuse a second question. Now he’s saying that time ran out again. That is somewhat fudging the truth, Senator Gold. You said you would not accept a second question.

I find that very disconcerting when the government leader refuses to answer questions from members opposite, and yet he is the one who is a “defender of democracy.” Hallelujah! Thank you that Senator Gold finally came to the chamber to defend democracy because I don’t know how this chamber could possibly have operated for the last 150 plus years without Prime Minister Trudeau’s appointments — “independent appointments” who have voted 96% in favour of the government and yet sit in this chamber and say they are independent, over and over again.

We have still four, maybe five, senators left who have admitted that they would love to still be in a Liberal caucus, but because of Trudeau’s wonderful reformed Senate, they have chosen to go to their own caucuses.

We’ve had a few members leave, and they now vote, occasionally, for Liberal budgets. I don’t understand that either. I don’t understand where this Senate has improved in the last few years.

My most memorable times in this Senate were my spats with my good friend Senator Terry Mercer, who was every bit as partisan as I am. Senator Ringuette knows it. So does Senator Cordy. So does Senator Massicotte. They know how partisan Senator Mercer was, and yet we were best friends because we understood this is a political chamber and we had two political parties here that went toe to toe and debated legislation and, on occasion, brought in time allocation.

I, for the life of me, don’t understand why Senator Gold is somehow trying to frame this as we are opposed to time allocation. We are not. We have supported time allocation many times. Ask Senator Carignan. We got appointed on the same day in 2009, and Senator Seidman.

We have seen time allocation. We supported it on our side and on the other side. That is not the issue, Senator Gold. The issue is you have no right. The Constitution, the Rules of the Senate say you have no right. You sit there one day as, “I’m an unaffiliated senator, I am an independent senator, I’m not a member of the government,” yet you are carrying the water of the government, and you are here telling us you have the right.

No, you don’t. I read the Rules today. It doesn’t matter how badly we want to change those Rules. What you did today, government leader, is you forced our Speaker to rewrite the Rules. That is what you, government leader, will go down in history as. You forced our Speaker to rewrite the Rules. Because it doesn’t matter what the Speaker says of this issue; it doesn’t change what the Rules say. The Rules say “recognized parties.” You are not part of a recognized party. You can’t have it both ways. “One day I’m part of a recognized party. One day I’m a Government Representative. The next day I’m a government leader. Today I will answer your questions. Tomorrow, when you question me about CBC, I will say, ‘Well, I don’t answer for CBC.’”

Someday, Senator Gold, you’re going to have to accept what you are, admit what you are.

Senator Carignan: To be or not to be.

An Hon. Senator: Hear, hear.