Senator Housakos: You can laugh and find it funny, but one day you will find yourselves in opposition and you’ll realize there is a job to be done. Let me tell you, we passed the vast majority of government legislation quickly — especially through 2016-17, when we didn’t have a majority of Trudeau-appointed Liberals sitting in this chamber. This happened because there was a cooperative opposition.

You can laugh all you want. Throughout that process, Senator Plett always negotiated with Senator Gold and his predecessor, Senator Harder. However, there comes a point in time when the opposition draws a line in the sand. You’re absolutely right; it’s well within the right of government to use time allocation. I’ll repeat that it is a legitimate tool of the Westminster parliamentary system.

Senator Gold, I thank you for highlighting my wonderful ruling back in 2015. You’re absolutely right; I said in the ruling what I say today, consistently, that it’s a legitimate tool of the government — except at that particular point in time we had an honest, transparent and accountable government that named the government leader in this chamber, the deputy government leader and a government whip.

More important to the Rules, Senator Gold, this chamber had a governing Conservative caucus. All of us who understand Westminster parliamentary rules around the world know that it is our political parties that form governments and elect our prime ministers. By the way, our legitimacy comes from those prime ministers who appoint us to the Senate through the process of political parties.

Thank you for that ruling, but read it in context and in its entirety.

Second, in your liberal interpretation of the Rules — vis-à-vis the negotiations that Senator Plett referred to in terms of trying to find agreement between government and the opposition — the word “government” is nowhere in those Rules that were drafted in 1991. The Rules were prescriptive and clear: A political party is required to trigger time allocation. This is not something we’re making up, Senator Gold.

Unless something has changed in the past hour that I’m not aware of — I did check before I came in here — on the Senate website, Senator Gold, you remain identified as “unaffiliated.” I’m pretty confident that anyone watching the televised proceedings today will also see a banner under Senator Gold’s name that says “unaffiliated.” It doesn’t say “government leader.” Yes, you went to deep lengths and, yes, we moved points of order that questioned the ill-thought-out approach of the government playing peekaboo with this chamber, with modelling the government leader as a representative.

You created that context where you have become nothing more than someone who receives information and doesn’t share any with this chamber. I think the words you used are some “passive taker of information.” We didn’t force that upon you. It’s the Prime Minister who forced it upon you and this chamber in the 2015 election when he played partisan politics with this institution. And that’s a reality.

Some have acquiesced to that political agenda. We’ve played along because we understand we lost three successive elections, and it was incumbent on the opposition to make this place work, so we gave a little bit. But there are certain limits.

We’ve all heard Senator Gold and his predecessor Senator Harder say it in media interviews and in this very chamber that they are not affiliated with any political party. Just one example comes from Senator Gold at exactly 2:45 p.m. on June 15, 2021, when being questioned about a former Green Party member, who had espoused some pretty anti-Semitic views, crossing the floor and being welcomed to the Liberal government caucus. Senator Gold, you responded by saying:

At the risk of being pedantic, I represent the government in the Senate. I’m not a member of the Liberal Party.

As for the decision of the party to accept that member and under what circumstances, those questions should properly be directed to the Liberal Party.

Do you remember that? Of course, it isn’t just that she wasn’t welcomed into the Liberal Party, as I said, but she became a Liberal caucus member, a member of the government. But you took no accountability for that. Regardless, there you have it in his own words, colleagues.

Senator Gold in his role as government leader or Government Representative, depending on the day, is not affiliated with the Liberal Party or other political party recognized by Elections Canada. I’m not making this up. And that is the base requirement — the most fundamental requirement — for Senator Gold to be able to play a role in advocating time allocation. It’s clear in the Rules. It’s not ambiguous, not open to Liberal interpretations, not open to Conservative interpretations, just independent factual interpretations.

If that changes here today, or if there ever is a ruling that changes that, I fully expect that a communiqué will immediately go to the Senate Communications Directorate and Senate broadcasting to have Senator Gold, Senator Gagné, Senator LaBoucane-Benson and all identified properly on the website and the televised proceedings of this institution being accountable and transparent to the public that you represent the government.

Even after that, it doesn’t even give you the right to time allocation. You have to have the biggest Liberal caucus, along with your $2 million budget on behalf of the government, to be able to allocate time, Senator Gold, and with agreement. This is the rule — if you have agreement. You don’t have the right to have an agreement because you are not the government leader in the chamber to negotiate. But if you have agreement, rule 7-1(1), Your Honour, states:

At any time during a sitting, the Leader or the Deputy Leader of the Government may state that —

— and I highlight —

— the representatives of the recognized parties have agreed to allocate a specified number of days or hours . . .

And, without agreement, rule 7-2(1) states:

At any time during a sitting, the Leader or the Deputy Leader of the Government may state that the representatives of the recognized parties have failed to agree to allocate time to conclude an adjourned debate on either . . .

I’m not a lawyer, but that’s pretty clear.

In accordance with the rule governing time allocation, the only role for the Leader or Deputy Leader of the Government under our current structure is to inform the chamber of the decision of the current Leader of the Opposition as to whether he wishes to impose any time allocation.

The rule clearly states, whether with agreement or without agreement, that the Leader or the Deputy Leader of the Government may state that the representatives of recognized parties have agreed or have failed to agree to allocate time. It does not state that the Leader or Deputy Leader of the Government is part of making that determination. But the recognized political parties have to do that.

If that were the intent of the rule, it would read, “having come to an agreement with,” or “failing to come to an agreement with.”

None of that wording is there. The wording of the rule purposely distinguishes between the representatives of the government and the representatives of recognized parties. Yet it does not say the agreement or lack thereof must be between government and recognized parties. It clearly leaves the government on the proverbial sideline of that decision, making clear the current wording of the rule — only the representatives of recognized parties can come to an agreement on time allocation. That’s the rule.

For clarity’s sake, Your Honour, we have the definition of “recognized party” in Appendix I, in case anyone has any ambiguity:

A recognized party in the Senate is composed of at least nine senators who are members of the same political party, which is registered under the Canada Elections Act, or has been registered under the Act within the past 15 years. . . .

That’s pretty clear, right? We respect, at least, Elections Canada’s laws. At least most of us do.

Continuing with Appendix I:

A recognized parliamentary group in the Senate is one to which at least nine senators belong and which is formed for parliamentary purposes. A senator may belong to either one recognized party or one recognized parliamentary group. Each recognized party or recognized group has a leader or facilitator in the Senate.

You will notice that the definition even makes the distinction — and this is important — between recognized parties and recognized parliamentary groups.

Colleagues, again, we did that in cooperation in order to accommodate a very political agenda that has been imposed on this parliamentary institution.

That’s important because, again, the rule governing time allocation mentions only representatives of the recognized parties — i.e. those affiliated with a political party as recognized by the Canada Elections Act.

Last I checked, the ISG — Independent Senators Group — the CSG — Canadian Senators Group — and PSG — the Progressive Senate Group — are not recognized by Elections Canada. You can apply if you would like to, but you’re not. Only government can allocate time in our Westminster model, and governments are formed by political parties elected in the House of Commons. And, of course, by extension, the Prime Minister, as I said earlier, gives us our legitimacy by appointing us in this chamber. Political parties — nowhere in the rule are representatives of parliamentary groups mentioned.

As I said, we’ve had seven or eight years. We’ve opened the Parliament of Canada Act. There didn’t seem to be any urgency at the time to change that. We’ve had eight years to change the way time allocation has been operating in this chamber. There is no ambiguity around this.

And before anyone jumps to their feet to say this must have been an oversight, a lot of time, effort and resources have gone into changing the Rules of the Senate over the years. These particular rules did not slip our attention. It was not by accident that representatives of recognized parties were singled out when it comes to making an agreement on time allocation. If you don’t wish to take my word for it, how do you explain that we did distinguish and include the leaders of recognized parliamentary groups as it pertains to speaking times during debate on motion of time allocation? So we had the debate.

Rule 7-3(1)(f), Your Honour, states that during debate on the motion without agreement:

(i) the Leader of the Government and the Leader of the Opposition may each speak for up to 30 minutes, and

(ii) the leader or facilitator of any other recognized party or recognized parliamentary group may speak for up to 15 minutes . . .

So there we referred to leaders of recognized parties and recognized parliamentary groups. In other words, they are not interchangeable in this place. That was decided a few years ago with everyone’s participation.

Therefore, when the rule states that the agreement, or lack thereof, must come from the leaders of the recognized parties in our current composition, that leaves only the representative of the Conservative caucus. That was not our choice. That was imposed on this place by the current Prime Minister. He might not like it today. The Government Representative today might like to be the government leader. You might even like to have a Liberal caucus today of 60 members to go with the $2 million budget, but you don’t have it.

It does not include the Government Representative by virtue of your own insistence. You did this. Your government did this; we didn’t.

If we’re still not satisfied with the intent of the wording of this rule and whether there is some ambiguity there for the rule to be interpreted, I’ll refer you to the then-government leader’s testimony at the now-defunct Modernization Committee on May 23, 2018. Senator Harder was addressing, amongst other things, possible ways to make proceedings in the chamber more efficient through the establishment of a business management committee. Obviously, that was not the direction that the Senate went, but it was clear that the notion of time allocation was on our minds. Again, it’s not like this one slipped by without consideration.

Senator Harder did testify at that time whatever approach we took must safeguard “. . . every senator’s individual right to debate, scrutinize, propose amendments and oppose.“

That would certainly explain the wording of the rule on time allocation in protecting the opposition’s role in determining it, especially when you consider that Senator Harder went on to say that the rule should also safeguard “. . . the government’s ability to have a say in the process of debate . . .” as it prepares to identify its own priorities. The duration of the bells, the deferral of votes as well as allowing members of the government leadership to sit as ex officio on committees — increasingly, he said nothing about the Government Representative playing a role in time allocation.

All of that is to further establish that the rule governing time allocation that singles out the representatives of recognized parties as the sole participants in any agreement was and is deliberate.

I have one final note, and it also comes from Senator Harder’s testimony at the Modernization Committee. Senator Harder spoke about the changes to the Parliament of Canada Act to reflect the new rules the Senate was establishing for itself, rightfully pointing out that any such changes would require the consent of both chambers of Parliament. Senator Harder said:

Because the Senate is a self-governing body, it is not for the government to unilaterally come forward with its own view of amendments to the Parliament of Canada Act that could affect the inner workings of the Senate.

Senator Harder stated that he agreed with our eminent former colleague Serge Joyal that any changes should come from the Senate itself and sent to the House to include in any legislation.

Senator Harder then cited the Leader of the Government in the House, the Honourable Dominic LeBlanc, from his own committee testimony on February 24, 2016, Your Honour. Minister LeBlanc stated:

I would be amenable to suggestions that Senate colleagues would have or whatever process you, Madam Chair, or your colleagues think is appropriate. . . .

You’ll appreciate that it’s not up to somebody who is serving in the House of Commons to come and suggest to senators how you may want to change or adjust your own Rules. . . . I would be happy to work collectively or collegially to ensure that if the government brings in a bill to amend the Parliament of Canada Act, we at the same time fix, amend, modernize or correct whatever you or your colleagues think might be important . . . .

Colleagues, Your Honour, our rule on time allocation is clear. It was put in place with the agreement of the Senate and in accordance with the reality of there no longer being a government caucus or a government leader who identifies as being affiliated with the governing party. This isn’t a holdover rule that hadn’t had time to change. We’ve made changes to reflect that it is no longer a chamber of political caucuses only.

If the government is allowed now to invoke time allocation, we are allowing the government to set the rules in this chamber with no barriers. I don’t just think it’s out of order; I would go so far as to say it is a breach of our privilege and a breach of the principles in this institution, which is we respect the rules of Parliament.

Even if you and everyone else in this chamber believes the government leader should be allowed to invoke time allocation regardless of their affiliation or lack thereof, that is a rule change that should not be decided in this manner. There are proper procedures. We can send this to the Rules Committee to be properly studied and allow that committee to report back to the chamber and follow the rules of Parliament.

In doing this now, the government is placing the Speaker as well, as my honourable colleague Senator Plett said, in a very untenable position. It is not his role to write or to overturn the Rules, Senator Gold, especially at the whim of someone from the other chamber — the Prime Minister — who is enforcing rule changes in this institution.

At the end of the day, Senator Gold, the Prime Minister has appointed a majority of senators in this chamber whose rhetoric fits the government’s. They articulate the government positions, they vote overwhelmingly for the government positions. We fund right now the leadership of the government in this chamber even though it has denied for seven and a half years that they are the government until, of course, today you have embraced government, so I don’t understand why this peekaboo charade continues to go on in this institution.

If it does — if there is a genuine willingness for independence — let’s show it and make sure that we don’t trample over the basic written Rules because this is a place of lawmaking, Your Honour. And if we as a place of lawmakers don’t respect our own Rules, how in the world are we going to have any legitimacy as an institution in the eyes of Canadians?

Thank you, Your Honour.

Hon. Claude Carignan: I’d like to say just a few words, given the late hour, to clarify some things. The first is that much is being made of the fact that this is the first time a time allocation motion is being used since the Trudeau government came to power. I would point out that the reason is simple: It’s because the Rules don’t allow it. That’s why there hasn’t been a time allocation motion before now, simply because the Rules are quite clear on the matter. I understand that Senator Gold used some manœuvre today to move a motion, but the fact remains that the Rules are very clear.

Second, much has also been made of using time allocation for bills. We are at the response to a message from the House of commons stage, a stage that couldn’t be more final for a bill — something we rarely see in fact. It has rarely happened that a message is sent to the House of Commons with amendments, only to have it returned to the Senate, followed by a reply.

If memory serves me, I’ve never seen a time allocation motion used at the response to a message from the House of Commons stage. At times rule 7-1 has been invoked on a bill, on amendments or at various reading stages, but I’ve never seen it used on a message from the Commons.

That is rather disappointing because this debate was going fairly well, beyond the matter of whether we took too much time or too little. Senator Gold mentioned that he’d reached an agreement with the leaders and that the bill had to be passed before the 10th or 11th, but that didn’t happen.

That’s fortunate, actually, because the debate continued and amendments were proposed by the other group. I no longer know what to call it because there are many groups with different names. Sometimes I get mixed up, but they all have colours that resemble the Senate chamber. These amendments were adopted and sent to the other place, and most of them were accepted. The debate was therefore not in vain. The fact that it went beyond the initial deadline set out by the government leader made it possible to continue the debate and propose amendments that were accepted by the House of Commons.

Although I don’t agree with the fact that senators were able to propose other amendments, the debate was still conducted properly and that led to improvements to the bill. What’s more, even though I think that the bill needed more amendments, the fact remains that a consensus will be reached by a vote. I’m sad that this is happening at the very end of this process. We’re at the message stage. Everything was going well. We had some success. Not me as a Conservative, because I obviously don’t agree with everything in the bill, but at least the process was complete, it was carried out in a respectful way, and we were able to make some improvements to the bill, many of which were accepted by the House of Commons. Now we’re at the very end of the process and we’re tripping at the finish line. We stopped running. The race stops here. I think that is a disgraceful end to a process that was nevertheless done by the book.

Senator Bellemare spoke of delay tactics. I invite you to read Serge Joyal’s book on the Senate. The Senate’s power to pass a time allocation motion is an important act to ensure fulsome debate within the context of the process that takes place here in this chamber.

I find it unfortunate that we’re ending this whole process with time allocation on a bill that’s specifically related to freedom of expression, especially when we were just days away from wrapping up debate. It’s also unfortunate that the Leader of the Government is using a time allocation motion to respond to a message to the House of Commons. I find that sad, and it’s the first time I’ve seen a time allocation motion at this stage. I don’t think it was the right time to set this precedent.

Again, Your Honour, I think we have to be respectful of the rules and respectful of each other, but this is a disappointing end to what has been an exemplary process up to this point.

[English]

Hon. Denise Batters: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak on the government’s motion to invoke time allocation on the Senate’s debate on the message from the House of Commons on Bill C-11. As you have heard throughout this debate, the Senate’s amendments on Bill C-11 were the product of an intensive committee study process. The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications heard nearly 70 hours of testimony from 140 witnesses, with 67 additional written submissions on this topic. The committee studied this issue tirelessly.

Since we received the message, the product of that committee study, back from the House of Commons, we’ve debated for only six hours before Senator Gold gave notice of the government’s intent to invoke time allocation. The Senate government leaders, first Senator Harder and now Senator Gold, have boasted for years about this government’s disdain for invoking time allocation and the lack of necessity for them to ever employ it. So why is the government choosing to invoke time allocation now?

After almost eight years of governing, it is appalling that the Trudeau government is choosing to impose time allocation in the Senate for the first time on Bill C-11, of all bills. With this move, the Trudeau government is censoring debate on a censorship bill.

The irony is not lost on Canadians, honourable senators. Canadians have lost a lot of trust in this Trudeau government as this legislation has worked its way through Parliament. The backlash from Canadians has been fast and furious, as citizens, and especially young people, resent the government’s attempt to interfere with the content Canadians can access and produce online.

Honourable senators, I know your email inboxes and telephone voice mail are just like mine: overflowing with emails and phone calls from Canadians opposed to Bill C-11. It is sometimes overwhelming, but it is indicative of the fact that many Canadians understand that their freedom of access to information and their freedom of expression are at risk with this legislation. People, especially young people, routinely stop me to register their opposition on this bill, not only Conservative-leaning people but also lots of people who have previously voted for the Trudeau government, as well as those who haven’t ever been engaged in politics before.

Canada’s domestic online content producers — musicians, artists and influencers — are largely united against this bill because of the negative implications this bill has in limiting their reach online and, in turn, curtailing their livelihoods.

Time allocation is one of the most political parliamentary procedures. Many senators in this chamber assert themselves as independent and devoid of partisan affiliation, but they will ultimately turn and vote for the use of the legislative guillotine on Bill C-11 simply to support this Trudeau government.

Honourable senators, don’t be fooled. Time allocation is just the government’s very blunt tool to cut short debate and force their agenda through Parliament.

In this place, one of our roles as senators is to safeguard and preserve the rights and interests of minorities that may be overrun in a House of Commons elected by representation by population. How is invoking time allocation in accordance with that aspiration, honourable senators? I submit that it runs roughshod over the very minority interests senators are sworn to protect.

Why is the Trudeau government pushing so hard to see that Bill C-11 passes both houses of Parliament as soon as possible? The timing is perhaps curious, but not difficult to understand. Canada is in the midst of a national affordability crisis, where Canadians are finding it difficult to secure the very necessities of life, like a roof over their heads and food on their tables. Meanwhile, the Trudeau government has increased the cost of bureaucracy by 50%, yet finds itself embroiled in the biggest public service strike in Canada’s history, something that could only be accomplished by the most incompetent money managers in the Trudeau government.

Once Bill C-11 is passed, I suspect the Trudeau government will move to prorogue Parliament soon in an attempt to lower the heat and distract from its many scandals — and they’re really dodging quite a few scandals, honourable senators.

First and foremost, of course, is the alleged Beijing election interference scandal that continues to dog Prime Minister Trudeau, following him like a bad stench. Tied into that is the mess that his family’s Trudeau Foundation has devolved into. We’re told one day that the Prime Minister hasn’t been involved with the Trudeau Foundation for ten years, even though his brother signed the agreement for a questionable donation that points right back to the Chinese Communist government. In fact, you might even be tempted to give the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt, until you open the newspaper and discover his office hosted a meeting of the Trudeau Foundation and senior government officials right within the confines of his Prime Minister’s Office.

Every day seems to bring more bad news for this Prime Minister, and we know that answering for his behaviour is not high on the list of his list of priorities. Prorogation has the advantage of keeping the Prime Minister well away from a pesky and intrusive opposition and media questions on Parliament Hill. Instead, he can hide away out of view, waiting until his Special Rapporteur magically reveals, just before the May long weekend, that — surprise — there is no need for a public inquiry into Beijing election interference, leaving the Prime Minister free to go to as many $9,000-a-night luxury beach villas as he wants. Surf’s up.

Meanwhile, with Bill C-11 rammed through Parliament, the long arm of the Trudeau government will have the ability to manipulate and influence the information Canadians see and produce online, just in time for another election. How fortuitous.

Honourable senators, you don’t have to provide Prime Minister Trudeau with political cover by passing this legislation. Our Senate produced 26 very solid and reasonable amendments to Bill C-11 after weeks of careful study, research and witness testimony. What did the Liberal-NDP majority in the House of Commons do with them? Sure, they accepted 20 of the 26 amendments, which sounds like a win, until you look closer and discover that they rejected some of the most substantive amendments. That included the most important amendment on exempting user-generated content, proposed by two Trudeau-appointed senators, Senator Miville-Dechêne and Senator Simons, from the largest group in the Senate.

The Trudeau government passed the amended bill back to the Senate, and now it is once again our choice to make. The government still refuses to protect user-generated content in the actual legislation, instead insisting that appending such a promise in the wording of the motion will suffice. The motion reads:

That the Senate take note of the Government of Canada’s public assurance that Bill C-11 will not apply to user-generated digital content and its commitment to issue policy direction to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission accordingly . . .

Honourable senators, I wasn’t born yesterday. I’ve seen Prime Minister Trudeau’s Liberal promises come and go. Do you remember electoral reform, 2 billion trees, clean drinking water on all reserves and a carbon tax capped at $50 per tonne? It’s funny how those promises just vaporized into the ether. This one will too.

The Trudeau government wants senators and, by extension, Canadians to just trust them, kind of like how the Senate government leader consulted with our leader before declaring a failed agreement and moving time allocation — that kind of trust? There is no reason to think that this Liberal promise will hold up any better than any of the many other broken Liberal promises.

The Liberals forced this message through the House of Commons side and now they are forcing it through the Senate with this imposition of time allocation. Honourable senators, here is your chance to prove your independence. We have the opportunity and the obligation to push back for the benefit of all Canadians who value freedom of thought and expression. If those of you who were appointed by Prime Minister Trudeau vote with the government to shut down debate, consider that to be the last vestige of the independent Trudeau Senate. You hold the majority here, so you decide. Here is hoping you choose wisely. Thank you.

[Translation]