Senator Plett: You are right. It is his prerogative. The question that I asked was: Why does he refuse? If the Prime Minister truly believed the line he is selling to Canadians that NSICOP is the best place to investigate what he knew about Beijing’s interference all along, he would quickly fill the vacancies on this committee. He would make sure this committee included a senator from the official opposition, the second-largest group in this chamber. He would also act on NSICOP’s reports and recommendations. Instead, he appoints senators from each of the groups, excluding the official opposition. This is what he has done the last two times.

The Prime Minister does none of the things that I mentioned, because his main concern from the start, leader, has been covering up the truth about Beijing’s interference and intimidation.

Leader, what is the Prime Minister afraid of that he won’t name a Conservative senator to the committee?

Senator Audette: Yes.

You know, before joining the Senate, I observed everyone in this chamber with a great deal of passion. There is the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. Many of you wondered whether this bill met the test of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. If not, how can we ensure that a commissioner of Indigenous languages can also collaborate with the Commissioner of Official Languages so that, in certain provinces, the Commissioner of Indigenous Languages also has some power? I know that we are talking about Bill C-13, but I would have liked to see some parallels or important relationships. I imagine we will be able to discuss it as part of this study. As a jurist, you mentioned it, and you may have some advice to give us.

Senator Carignan: I’d also like to ask you a question about the testimony. The English testimony was translated into French, but the French testimony hasn’t been translated into English. Obviously, that reduces the impact of the testimony of those who chose to speak French. Their message hasn’t been disseminated or published in the same way as the English testimony.

Over $324,000 was budgeted for translation, so will the government commit to translating the French testimony into English, especially since the Privy Council Office is responsible for the archives of the Public Order Emergency Commission?

Senator Klyne: Senator Gold, you may have answered this point, but could you comment on this? Maybe it’s an opportunity to underscore something.

In one of his final speeches to this chamber, the Honourable Murray Sinclair said, “. . . the Senate should proceed with adopting fair and transparent rules regardless of whether there is unanimity.”

He continued:

The benefit of a government procedural avenue for internal reforms would be that such a process could more readily involve a conclusion after a reasonable period of time.

Can you comment on that?

Senator Coyle: Thank you very much. I look forward to hearing the answer. Will it be in the Fall Economic Statement or not?

In October 2021, the Government of Canada announced a commitment to reduce oil and gas sector methane emissions, as you have said, by at least 75% by 2030. New federal methane emissions goals are expected later this year. However, the provincial equivalency agreements with Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan allow those provinces to use their own tailored provincial regulations designed to meet the previous federal goal of 45% reduction in methane emissions by 2025.

Senator Gold, could you tell us if and how the federal government will be collaborating with the provincial governments to support them in their efforts to reach these goals and also in increasing the ambition of their provincial regulations to match the federal 2030 commitment?

Senator Gold: Thank you for your question. I think Canadian citizens answered those questions in a series of elections.

The fact is, colleagues, that the investments that this government has made with the support of all parties in this place and in the other place through the pandemic and through our recovery have resulted in Canada emerging from that worldwide crisis with a strong economy and well positioned for the future. The investments that this government has made to help Canadians through the difficult economic times that we’re experiencing, whether in food prices or housing costs, have also helped Canadians escape or at least mitigate the worst impacts of that.

This is a question for which neither the government, nor I as the government’s representative, should be ashamed.

It is an appropriate exercise of good government to help Canadians through difficult times and to make sure that the economy is well positioned to withstand and flourish in the uncertain days, months and years ahead.

Senator Gold: Thank you for raising the issue of the court because I think it will also give me an opportunity to correct what I think is a slight misunderstanding of the provisions of this bill as it applies to the court.

To answer your question directly, no, I don’t believe that the issues that you have raised justify sending it to the Legal Committee, and I’ll explain why.

With respect to the judiciary, the provisions of this bill remove an exemption that existed for the Supreme Court of Canada that was placed in the original act and, at the time, was thought to be “temporary,” absolving the court as an institution from the same requirements that other superior courts had. That is, to give effect to the constitutionally protected rights of litigants to be heard and understood in the language of their choice without the aid of an interpreter. What is perhaps not understood — and I apologize, Senator Batters, if I’m putting words in your mouth, or others; I don’t mean to. But this does not mean that every judge appointed to the Supreme Court or any other Supreme Court must be bilingual, fluent or otherwise. That is not what the legislation requires. It is an institutional obligation on the court as an institution that when it hears cases, the litigants before the court must be ensured that they are able to address the court and be understood without the benefit of an interpreter.

I’ll give an example. It happens, happily, that the Supreme Court of Canada in today’s composition has nine judges — three from Quebec, three from Ontario, as is our practice, custom and law — who are all functionally bilingual, but it is not actually a requirement and wouldn’t be a requirement. It would be a requirement that the panel of judges who hears a case be a panel that is able to hear and understand testimony, whether in English or French, without the benefit of an interpreter. For example, the quorum for a case at the Supreme Court of Canada, as you know, is five. There is nothing in Bill C-13 that requires that every future judge, where it’s the Supreme Court or of any superior court — because those provisions have been in place for some long time — must be fluently bilingual. It is conceivable that a Supreme Court judge may be appointed if they only speak French and perhaps an Indigenous language. Although I don’t think there has been a unilingual French judge on the Supreme Court since Confederation, there have certainly been unilingual English judges. But that is not precluded by this so long as the court, as an institution, when it structures its panels — which is typically under the jurisdiction of the Chief Justice — has the ability to satisfy the institutional obligation that is now imposed upon the Supreme Court from which it had been exempted temporarily under the Official Languages Act of 30 years ago.

Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!

Hon. Sharon Burey: Colleagues, I rise today following World Hunger Day, which was May 28, 2023.

[English]

I also draw our attention to the dire fact that many Canadian children, youth and adults are experiencing hunger on a daily basis. We know that Northern, remote and Indigenous communities, marginalized and racialized communities and persons with disabilities also bear the brunt of food insecurity.

Food insecurity is defined as inadequate or insecure access to food because of financial constraints. According to the Canadian Income Survey of 2021, an alarming number of Canadians struggle with food insecurity, with almost 20% of households experiencing food insecurity at some point in 2021. This is approximately 7 million people and includes nearly 2 million children. This is a considerable increase from 2020, and these increases in food insecurity mainly affected families with children.

Why is this important? According to the Canadian Public Health Association, food insecurity is a social determinant of health, defined as “the social and economic factors that influence people’s health.” As a pediatrician, I had a front-row seat to seeing the effects of food insecurity on the physical and mental health and academic and learning outcomes of my patients.

According to PROOF, a research group at the University of Toronto, adults living in food-insecure homes are more vulnerable to infectious diseases; poor oral health; chronic conditions like depression, anxiety, heart disease and diabetes; and premature deaths. Simply put, food insecurity results in high costs to our health care budgets.

The 2021 report of the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the other place made several important recommendations, including “. . . recognizing that food sovereignty is a precondition to food security . . .” for Indigenous peoples and Northerners.

According to PROOF:

There is a strong body of evidence showing that food insecurity can be reduced through policy interventions that improve the incomes of low-income households.

Food insecurity and poverty are inextricably linked.

There is also evidence that school food programs have been found to improve school attendance, learning and academic performance and likely have positive physical and mental health outcomes, not just for children but for their families as well.

In closing, I urge you, colleagues, to think of the wasted and lost potential of our children, the suffering of Canadians who experience food insecurity and the cost to our society due to increasing health care and other costs and lost productivity. Let us not be afraid to use data and science, respect other ways of knowing from our Indigenous brothers and sisters, roll up our sleeves and get to work. Our children are depending on us.

Thank you. Meegwetch.

Hon. Amina Gerba: Honourable senators, on May 18, we celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Association.

I would like to pay tribute to the co-founder of this association, which I have the privilege of co-chairing today, our former colleague, the Honourable Raynell Andreychuk.

The Honourable Senator Andreychuk is a visionary who is passionate about Africa. She is an experienced diplomat who spent a good part of her working life in Africa, where she served as Canada’s High Commissioner to Kenya and Uganda and then as Canada’s Ambassador to Somalia.

She was appointed to the Senate in 1993, thus becoming the first woman from Saskatchewan to serve in the upper chamber of Canada’s Parliament.

After taking her place in the Senate, she realized that no one was talking about Africa, except in the context of development aid or the role of some African countries in the Francophonie. She also realized that our country didn’t have a foreign policy on Africa, even though we had such policies for most other areas of the world.

For all these reasons, she thought that we needed to establish direct parliamentary relations with the 54 separate countries that make up the African continent. In her opinion, our country needed to develop a foreign policy for this continent that she had the opportunity to visit and get to know well.

With the help of the late MP Mauril Bélanger, she co-founded the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Association in 2003 and, together, they served as co-chairs until 2016.

Over the past two decades, the association has organized bilateral missions to 34 African countries, forging direct relationships with African parliamentarians and promoting our democratic values in the countries visited.

Honourable senators, I am honoured and very proud to pursue the path charted by the Honourable Senator Andreychuk, to hopefully one day achieve a true partnership and rapprochement between Canada and Africa.

Thank you.

Senator Cormier: It’s a short one. Érik Labelle Eastaugh, François Larocque, Michel Bastarache, Benoît Pelletier, Robert Leckey, Michel Doucet, David Robitaille and Mark Power are all experts who have testified before the Official Languages Committee during its pre-study and provided evidence on legal and constitutional issues surrounding the bill.

Senator, with the expertise on that committee — you know the members of the committee — and considering its capacity to invite experts to look at the amended bill, don’t you now trust that the committee, with all that expertise — and some of the members of that committee being there for many years — is well equipped, better equipped and indeed the best equipped to exclusively examine this piece of legislation?

I recognize the expertise of Legal and Constitutional Affairs and the colleagues who are on that committee, but we have been working on this bill — this act — since 2017. We are well equipped to study it. Can you comment on this?

Senator Seidman: Thank you. I’ll just say very briefly I understand why you are asking the question, but I also suggest to you that, for example, we get a budget bill here and we send it to various committees for a reason — because committees have their specialties. They have experts on those committees who can analyze portions of a bill in accordance with those specialties. Legal and Constitutional Affairs has the specialty and expertise to understand those constitutional issues that could be at risk in this bill. So from that point of view, their understanding would be better suited than Official Languages, in my humble opinion.

Senator Plett: Yes, I have a question. The Prime Minister never wanted a public inquiry. He has gone to great lengths to avoid one because he benefited from Beijing’s interference.

Leader, here is the question: The Prime Minister designed this whole farce to absolve himself. According to the polls, a majority of Canadians want the public inquiry, but your Liberal government has basically said that they’re wasting their breath. Isn’t that right? I know you don’t want to answer it, but have the courage to do the right thing.

Senator Housakos: Government leader, it is really remarkable that three weeks after getting this question, you can’t answer in a transparent and honest forthwith fashion. It’s not a complicated question.

I think I understand why your government refuses to answer the question. I would be embarrassed as well if I were part of a government that is paying $44 billion of interest this fiscal year on the debt that you have doubled since you have come into power. I would be ashamed to actually come up with that number. You have had ample opportunity to answer the question.

I can understand the shame, because in this fiscal year your government is about to spend as much money on the interest on the national debt as you are in health transfer payments, which explains why one in five Canadians — and I would venture to say one in four in some provinces — don’t even have a family doctor.

I have another question for you, and it’s an even simpler one. If you look at this current fiscal situation, your government’s spending is almost even on interest payments on the debt and health transfer payments.

In 2015, I was a member of this chamber when the government at the time was spending $27 billion in interest payments on debt that previous governments had accumulated. It was less than two thirds of what they were paying in health transfer payments to the provinces.

If you weren’t a Liberal government representative in this chamber and you were an average Canadian, which one of those two fiscal pictures would you prefer to have as a Canadian citizen?

Senator Gold: No, I’d be happy if there were an opposition that was as independent as you claim to be. I wish there were an opposition that did not put partisanship upon the protection of Canadian national security. I wish we had an opposition or a Leader of the Opposition in the other place who had the courage to read the information as opposed to protecting himself —

Senator Gold: Thank you for your question. Environmental regulation and jurisdiction of the environment is a shared one. This government works with all willing provincial and territorial governments with the common objective of reducing emissions, promoting climate change and promoting a transition to a sustainable, greener economy. Nowhere is that more important than in the oil and gas sector, which is in many ways a leader in innovation in this area.

With regard to your question, Canada’s emissions reporting, as you would know, is prepared in accordance with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and is based upon science.

With regard to the more specific aspects of your question, I’ll bring those to the attention of the minister.

[Translation]

Senator Seidman: No, I can’t. Thank you.

Senator Cormier: Thank you, Senator Seidman. First, I want to congratulate you and thank you for your dedication and commitment to official languages. You have been on the Official Languages Committee for years, and you have done a lot of work. You are dedicated to the anglophone community in Quebec.

Considering that the Official Languages Committee’s mandate is broad and allows it to examine any matter relating to official languages in general — which includes constitutional language rights guaranteed by the Constitution Act, 1867 and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — considering it is mandated to review the application of the Official Languages Act and the application of its regulations, and considering that the Official Languages Committee has paid particular attention to legal and constitutional questions during its pre-study of the bill, don’t you think that this committee is better equipped to exclusively examine this piece of legislation?

Senator Loffreda: Thank you for the question. The answer is yes because we are here to analyze the bill. As I used to say in my former life, we’re going to have to live with all this for a very long time. It’s not a matter of days, weeks, or months and that’s why we have to do things right. Either we do this properly or not at all. So I believe this is an option we should look at.

I also agree with Senator Seidman, who’s of the opinion that, in addition to the expertise of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee — as is already done at the National Finance Committee and the Banking Committee — we study several bills, with one committee being ultimately responsible for gathering the opinions of others who have some expertise that your committee may not have.

[English]