Hon. Colin Deacon: Honourable senators, based on my second reading speech — where I offered no solutions whatsoever — you won’t be very surprised that I am going to speak in favour of Senator Tannas’s amendment.

Colleagues, I recognize that it’s rare for the Senate to amend the budget implementation act, as it should be. Some have said that amending the budget implementation act may put the Senate’s reputation at risk. I completely disagree under these circumstances and with this specific issue.

In 2017, as senators debated whether to hive off a portion of the budget bill for further study and debate, the Prime Minister offered that “it’s important to understand that the House of Commons has the authority when it comes to budgetary matters.”

I agree fully. I expect most, if not all, of us agree as it relates to “budgetary matters.” The proposed change to the Canada Elections Act in Division 39, on the last page of a budget bill, is not a budgetary matter. Typically, a budget bill is about giving Canadians financial support in challenging times, about providing access to new rights and opportunities, like affordable childcare or investing in our future. Budget bills are not about undermining a Canadian voter’s right to privacy — an issue that our three major political parties have refused to act on for more than a decade.

So let’s talk about that issue. To Senator Duncan’s question to Senator Tannas, according to a 2021 Elections Canada survey of voters, 96% of Canadians agreed that laws should regulate how political parties collect and use Canadians’ personal information.

This is not the case today. These political parties self-regulate. This remains the case because the organizational leadership of the Liberal, Conservative and NDP parties have demonstrated that they cannot get past — as far as I’m concerned — their conflicts of interest as it relates to this issue. It’s ironic that the 96% of voters who want legal privacy protections to be extended to political parties can now only look to the unelected Senate for help. I’m of the opinion that we offer a beacon of hope, simply because 80% of us are not whipped by partisan leadership and can look at this issue independently. This is our time to provide that counterbalance to the elected House of Commons, where less than 1% of elected members are independent of the partisan whip.

Colleagues, the Prime Minister made one request of me when he appointed me to the Senate, and that was to challenge “the government” — whichever government is in power.

I try to do so as collegially and responsibly as possible. I have never, to this point, voted against a budget implementation bill, and I doubt that I will do it this time, but I am in favour of this amendment.

I chatted with most of you about the Prime Minister’s request, and I understand that he made a similar request of many, if not all, of his appointees. We’re independent. We’re not whipped. This is a luxury in Ottawa. It’s also a profound responsibility. Few have had this luxury and responsibility in the history of Canada. Well, now is our moment to fulfill that responsibility. This is why I support Senator Tannas’s amendment. It gives the political parties two years to implement new legislation that actually creates:

 . . . a national, uniform, exclusive and complete regime applicable to registered parties and eligible parties respecting their collection, use, disclosure, retention and disposal of personal information.

It is a firm and clear response that I believe, Senator Shugart, shows restraint.

The only ones who’ve been denying Canadians access to these privacy protections are the individuals and organizations that lead the Conservative, NDP and Liberal parties. But they’re conflicted in this debate, and their actions have proven that they’re serving their own political interests and clearly not the wishes or interests of Canadian voters.

The NDP, Liberals and Conservatives have worked in concert for more than a decade, seemingly doing everything in their power to not give Canadians privacy protections as it relates to political party data, despite the wishes of 96% of voters. For more than a decade, Canada’s three main political parties have ignored the two officers of parliament responsible for these issues. The Privacy Commissioner and the Chief Electoral Officer have repeatedly called for legislative, or even voluntary, protections to be put in place, but to no avail. They’ve ignored the strong and compelling recommendations from the House of Commons Ethics Committee report, specifically called Democracy Under Threat: Risks and Solutions in the Era of Disinformation and Data Monopoly. This demonstrates that the political party leadership is even willing to ignore the voices of elected MPs from their own parties. And they’ve joined forces to thwart the efforts of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for B.C. by challenging him in the Supreme Court of British Columbia to stop him from trying to protect B.C. voters’ privacy in the perpetual absence of federal protections.

As I said in my second-reading speech on Bill C-47, it’s remarkable and deeply disturbing that this is one issue that unites Liberals, Conservatives and NDP in these hyper-partisan times. It is a sad irony that, instead of uniting to address the threat of foreign interference — the number-one political issue of 2023 — they are united in their desire to deny Canadian voters privacy protections that almost every Canadian voter says they want.

But why are privacy protections important in the first place? Large databases have been said to be like gold. True, they can have enormous value. However, the architect behind much of Australia’s work to develop and apply their consumer data rights, my friend Scott Farrell, describes it differently. He sees data as being like uranium because it’s both extremely powerful and dangerous, and it has a long half-life. That’s because data can continue to deliver harms for a long time if not handled very carefully.

Access to large amounts of detailed personal data enables political parties to micro-target their political messaging. This personal data allows them to target and speak compellingly to the interests of increasingly narrow slices of our voting population to motivate those voters to donate and get out to vote, as Senator Tannas alluded to.

Consequently, our political parties and their messaging increasingly focus on the issues that divide Canadians, not the issues that unite us. As I mentioned, political party organizers now openly admit that they choose their voters; voters no longer choose their political parties. This is equivalent, in my mind, to digital gerrymandering.

Currently, our political parties are not required to secure any voter consent, regardless of the data they gather. They do not need to be transparent in terms of the data they have or how it’s used. They are not required to provide any guardrails, meaning nothing is out of bounds, and they’re not accountable to an appropriate governance body. There is no authority to which voters can complain or who can investigate abuses. There are no protections. All of the evidence, including Division 39 in the BIA, suggests that our political parties may be very happy to keep it that way.

As I said at second reading, these databases represent a powerful target for foreign adversaries who intend to interfere in our democracy. If a political party is hit by a cyberattack, they have no obligation to report that breach to anyone. A decade of evidence suggests that this status quo will continue unless the Senate rises to the challenge and adopts Senator Tannas’s amendment.

One of the very first debates that I heard when I was appointed to this chamber was by the Honourable André Pratte, a dearly missed former colleague for so many of us. He described four criteria that justify the Senate’s actions if it were to continue pushing to amend a government bill. In that situation, he was speaking to the message back from the House related to Bill C-45, the Cannabis Act. Senator Pratte offered that the Senate should insist on an amendment in relatively rare cases where: one, the issue is of special importance related to our constitutional role; two, where we are prepared to lead a serious fight and see it to its completion; three, where a significant part of public opinion is on our side; and, four, where there are realistic prospects of convincing or forcing the government to change its mind. These four points have helped me as I considered Senator Tannas’s amendment and, if adopted, our potential response to the government if they were to reject this reasonable amendment.

I firmly believe that it was entirely inappropriate to include Division 39 in this budget bill. Regardless, Senator Tannas’s amendment gives the Conservative, Liberal and NDP party leadership what they want, and it gives us the confidence that Canadians’ privacy rights will ultimately be protected.

This amendment also allows us to fulfill each of Senator Pratte’s criteria. It provides a counterbalance to the whipped House of Commons where the leadership of the political parties are conflicted, denying Canadian voters their fundamental right to privacy. I would argue that it fulfills the distinct constitutional role of the unelected Senate while respecting the House of Commons’ ultimate authority on budget matters. It empowers us to fulfill the objective of the serious fight that has been led by the officers of Parliament who are responsible for these issues and by the House Ethics Committee who saw and warned that the status quo presents threats and risks to our democracy and, finally, by a provincial privacy commissioner who has been trying to protect the privacy of B.C. voters when federal political parties refused to do so voluntarily.

These collective efforts have been rebuffed for more than a decade by the political party leadership that has a blatant conflict of interest. It also responds to the public’s conviction — not just its opinion, its conviction — as 96% of Canadians want political parties to provide legal privacy protections. The last 10 years have clearly demonstrated that if Canadians are to get those privacy protections, the whipped House of Commons will not lead the way. Only independent senators can. It is up to us, colleagues.

And finally, Senator Tannas’ amendment provides a realistic prospect of convincing the government to change its mind. It gives the NDP, Conservatives and Liberals what they want, as long as they deliver what is also promised in Division 39. If a complete national privacy regime is implemented within 24 months, then they get to keep the change to the Canada Elections Act that makes that federal privacy regime exclusive.

I’m sure that the irony of this situation is not lost on any of us — the fact that an unelected Senate might stand firm to protect the foundation of our democratically elected House of Commons. I know that voting in favour of this amendment might be disruptive, but it’s our responsibility to look out for the rights of Canadians. Only the Senate can finally bring certainty to the 96% of Canadians who want legal political party privacy protections.

For me, the question is clear. If you agree with the 96% of Canadians that laws should regulate how political parties collect and use Canadians’ personal information, then this is the moment to stand firmly behind and in favour of Senator Tannas’ amendment. If we choose to stand firm, which I desperately hope we will, I think the Senate will have done something for which we can be incredibly proud and for which Canadians will someday be thankful. Thank you, colleagues.

Hon. Ian Shugart: Honourable senators, I just want to put a few points fairly briefly on the record. The first point is that I completely agree with my friend, our colleague Senator Tannas. I agree wholeheartedly with the points that he has made about omnibus legislation, and I’m afraid I also agree with his prediction about the fate of the amendment.

I said yesterday that I’m having a little bit of a challenge in moving from the executive to the legislative branch. Today I find it a great deal easier. This is a practice that has been carried out by governments of both parties, and there is a great danger that, because it is a bipartisan practice, it becomes acceptable and a way of doing business. But I would argue that bad behaviour does not constitute convention, and this is bad behaviour.

I will say on the amendment that I think, while it is creative and while I agree with the points that you made, Senator Deacon, in your comments, or most of them — it’s not an area that I’m sufficiently familiar with — but in principle, I agree that we have to come to deal with this issue of privacy and the regimes under which political parties are governed.

My own view in relation to the roles of the two chambers is that to pass this amendment now, at this stage in the process and in relation to the larger picture, would be disproportionate. On that basis, I personally would respectfully vote against the amendment.

Let me turn my attention to what we should do in the alternative, because I think we should not stop there. I think we should address this issue of omnibus legislation. Notwithstanding the rulings of the Speaker in the other place, I don’t believe it does go far enough in addressing what is at issue here. I think that ruling is tantamount to saying that this is beyond question because it was written in the budget document. The issue is: Should it ever have been put in the budget document? My response to that in this particular case is, “No.”

My view is that budgets relate to the fiscal and, more broadly, the economic position of the government. Yes, they do constitute the policy position of the government, but to the extent that they are the vehicle for transporting other legislative priorities, the government should be exercising far more caution and principle than it has been. Again, this is a practice of both governments of long standing. It is not a partisan comment in any way.

I would argue this is not just poor governance, restricting, as it does, the ability of parliamentarians to be proper legislators; it verges on being a question of privilege. It’s on that basis that I think we have a right and a responsibility to pick this issue up and carry it forward. I would venture to guess that it is a question of privilege for our colleagues in the other place as well.

I’m going to suggest that we take up this issue. I don’t know exactly by what means. I think some statistical work about what has happened in the recent past would be useful. I think we should have conversations with our colleagues in the other place. I think we should give due warning to the government that we are taking this issue very seriously and this is not just an annual cri de cœur of anxiety about bad practice, but that we want to address it and we want to change it permanently. I think we should do that sooner rather than later. Thank you, senators.

Hon. Rosemary Moodie: Would the honourable senator take a question? I would like to ask you if you could help us understand further what you mean by “disproportionate.” Should we vote for this amendment? Please help us understand: disproportionate to what?

Hon. Clément Gignac: Will my colleague accept another question? Thank you, Senator Shugart. We are fortunate to have you here because you provide guidelines. I referred to you in my speech yesterday.

If I read between the lines — and I’ve been in politics in Quebec for a few years — if this amendment had been presented, let’s say, in April or May — not five minutes before midnight like this week, but a month or two months ago — is it possible that you would have been more comfortable voting for it? I tried to read between the lines, and five minutes before midnight is not the best timing, I would say, but at the same time, we have to send a message.

Would your position be different if this had happened a month or two before adjourning for the summer?

Hon. Pierre J. Dalphond: Honourable senators, I want to thank Senator Tannas for having provided us an opportunity today to discuss the practice of putting a lot of other things in a budget implementation act, including amendments to various laws with no financial aspect and, of course, even less budgetary aspects, like taxes. Maybe the carbon tax was a budgetary issue; according to the Conservatives, it’s a tax.

This practice that was supported by this Senate in Parliaments must stop. I’m happy to see a change of opinion amongst many of us here today who were there at the time. I really appreciate the fact that they are changing their mind about this type of budget implementation act.

As I was reported to have said, and rightly so, in The Globe and Mail last week, I’m of the view that this practice continued by the current government, despite its promise to do otherwise, is an abuse of parliamentary process, preventing us from fully debating important issues unrelated to the budgetary aspects of the government’s agenda.

The question, then, is this: What shall we do to stop such a practice by Conservative and Liberal governments? What Senator Tannas is proposing is to add a sunset provision on an amendment to the Canada Elections Act. Colleagues, the provision in question was proposed by the government without any prior consultations with the Chief Electoral Officer or the Privacy Commissioner, as was said at the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee. In fact, the amendment is nothing but an attempt to derail legal proceedings pending in B.C. introduced by the provincial Privacy Commissioner against all the federal political parties operating in the province of B.C., excluding the Bloc Québécois. All these parties are united in challenging the authority of the B.C. Privacy Commissioner.

In my view, the logical approach will be to propose to delete the provision, but it seems Senator Tannas proposes to keep it but only for two years. This is not a good provision and was not adopted with prior consultations, but, nevertheless, it should be in force for two years. I don’t really understand the approach.

That said, I think our response to the BIA — the budget implementation act — should be in full exercise of restraint, as was pointed out by Senator Shugart yesterday in his very interesting speech. It was a very good maiden speech, sir, and today’s was another one which was very good. Instead of sending an immediate message to the other place at the eleventh hour, I would prefer the adoption of a strong motion or an amendment to our Rules that will be both published well before their coming into force and well before the next budget.

Instead of a prior warning, what is proposed today is an amendment that would likely create havoc at the eleventh hour before the summer recess. This is not, in my opinion, a wise way to press for change. Accordingly, I will vote against the proposed amendment. Thank you.

Hon. Ratna Omidvar: Senator Shugart, thank you for your comments yesterday and today on senatorial restraint and wisdom. This is an important matter. I can already predict — although we do not want to deal in hypotheticals — that next year at the same time we will be having the same conversation, more or less.

Senator Tannas has said, outside of this amendment, he will launch an inquiry. Do you believe that our excellent Senate Committee on National Finance should undertake a study on omnibus bills and all that is good, bad and ugly around them to facilitate a better position for us by the time next June comes around?

Hon. Denise Batters: Senator Shugart, thank you for your remarks. Just recently here, in response to a question, I believe, you said this was a confidence measure; however, of course, the Senate is not a confidence chamber. In the event that Senator Tannas’ amendment on this issue passed, the government would not fall. This is something that then would be sent over to the House of Commons, which is still sitting as we speak right now. Would you acknowledge that though we’re dealing with a budget implementation act, it is within the power of the Senate to provide an amendment to that?

Hon. Lucie Moncion: Senator Woo, would you take a question? It has to do with the comment you made when you said that we were talking about tacking on an amendment at the last minute and you mentioned the consequences of adopting that amendment at the last minute. The Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs recently tabled its report in the Senate. Since the tabling of the report, there has been no comment about or mention of this specific section. I think that people have had enough time to bring this to our attention. I would like to hear your thoughts on that.

[English]

Hon. Denise Batters: Senator Woo, I think I may have missed a little bit here getting the translation, but I believe the exchange you were having with Senator Dasko was about how this issue of removing the Canada Elections Act — or that it’s not an appropriate place to have this provision in a budget implementation act — and I believe there was some discussion to indicate that this hasn’t been discussed in the chamber prior to today.

I just wanted to bring to your attention, Senator Woo, in case you didn’t realize that, actually, is not correct. Senator Loffreda mentioned it in passing in his second reading speech about how the Legal Committee presented a report from our chair, Senator Cotter, which referenced this and Criminal Code amendments that were included in the budget implementation act. We made observations indicating it was not appropriate.

Then, after Senator Loffreda made that remark, I brought that to his attention to say specifically that these Criminal Code provisions and the Canada Elections Act should not be in here.

Do you recognize that perhaps you missed that because this has been a matter that we have raised in debate in this chamber?

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): I will be brief. But I do want to make a few comments. Senator Woo will be the most surprised person in this chamber when I say I agree entirely with everything Senator Woo said today. I also agree with everything Senator Shugart said. I’m in agreement today. I’m in a good mood.

Colleagues, we have spent I don’t know how many hours of debate on an amendment that the sponsor of the amendment said doesn’t have a snowball’s chance of making it, and here we are debating it. We have the government leader who doesn’t know how to take yes for an answer when he already has the sponsor telling him that this will never pass, and then he gets up and gives us every reason why we should vote for it because that’s actually what the government leader did. He said we should not do this because it’s the eleventh hour; the House might not be able to deal with it. The House might be rising so they won’t be able to deal with this issue.

The fact of the matter is, colleagues, the House doesn’t care what we do here, which is evident by when they send us the bills. We don’t have supply. We want to rise tomorrow and we don’t have supply now. We don’t have Bill C-18 now. We’re going to have to vote on a message on Bill C-18; we don’t have it, yet we want to rise tomorrow.

Senator Gold somehow defends what this government is doing. This government over there cannot organize a two-car parade, and we are somehow supposed to carry their water.

Then Senator Gold and Senator Loffreda, quite frankly, both said, “But trust this government.” I haven’t seen anything in the last couple of weeks that makes me want to trust this government. We have ministers and the Prime Minister telling us things that aren’t true, and yet we’re supposed to trust them.

We have the right to amend legislation here, no matter what time of the day, no matter what time of the month and no matter what time of the sitting. For the government leader to say, “Don’t do it now because they won’t have time to deal with it,” they don’t really care if we have time to deal with supply; we don’t have it. So are we going to deal with it on Friday? Are we going to come back here after Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day and deal with it? We don’t know; we don’t have it. But we’re supposed to not do something on the eleventh hour.

Senator Tannas and I talked earlier, and since it was me saying this, I don’t think it was confidential. I told Senator Tannas I wasn’t going to vote for this amendment. Now I find myself in a quandary. I may change my mind. I’m sure if my colleagues are going to support whatever I do, then Senator Deacon is going to say we’ve all been whipped.

As Senator Tannas said at the start of his speech, he was making it as Senator Tannas, not as the leader of the Canadian Senators Group. That’s what I’m doing here today. But one thing I do tell you, colleagues, if there is a standing vote on this and there is a bell, then myself and my colleagues are going to go up and we will discuss the pros and cons of this bill. When we come back, we may all vote the same way, and we may not. We will put our arguments forward.

For people to say we are whipped because we are like-minded, I actually find that offensive. Like-minded people do like-minded things. That’s why we’re all Conservatives because, at least philosophically, we are on the same page. But we don’t always vote the same. If Senator Deacon wasn’t in the far corner, he may occasionally see that some of us vote differently than others.

We have unanimous consent motions that we’re told all the time we are supposed to vote in favour of because it was unanimously decided over there, so we should vote for it here because it was unanimously decided over there. And I’m arguing both sides of the coin here, just in case anyone was wondering about that.

Colleagues, we had unanimous consent on this issue. One thing I did agree with Senator Gold on, four parties over there voted on this and decided this should be there. I don’t agree with omnibus bills. I do agree that both parties in the other place have done that, without question. I was part of the government when we received omnibus bills and it made it very difficult because there were parts of a bill sometimes that I didn’t want to support, but I had to support it because it was an omnibus bill.

I don’t believe in defeating budget bills. I don’t think this would defeat the budget bill, I agree there. But it was unanimously decided by the four elected parties over there that this should be where it is.

Senator Shugart was quite correct when he said we need to find a way of correcting some of this. One of the ways that we need to have of correcting this is to have a government leader in the Senate tell the House leader in the other place that here is the last date we’re going to deal with your legislation. If you don’t have it to us by that date, you’re not going to get it through, and that includes the budget.

They are treating us with contempt. I was told on Twitter — before Bill C-21 was introduced in this chamber, the parliamentary secretary in the other place tweeted Senator Plett should stop stalling Bill C-21. It had not yet been introduced. That’s the way they treat us.

Then the day after my good friend made his speech, on June 1, the minister tweeted again saying Senator Plett should stop stalling Bill C-21. Tomorrow, we’re going to have at least two speeches on Bill C-21 before I’m speaking, according to the list, and yet I’m stalling it. That’s the way they treat us.

Then Senator Gold says to us, but trust us. I’m sorry, I don’t trust them.

Now I’m going to see what my colleagues tell me what to do, how they whip me. They might convince me to vote one way on this bill, they might convince me to vote the other way. I’m not sure how I’m going to vote. I’m going to let them tell me how to vote. We’re going to discuss this properly.

But colleagues, let’s not defeat this amendment because it’s late in the day or late in the chamber. Let’s defeat the amendment if the amendment deserves defeating, and I’m leaning towards that. But not because it’s the last hour of the last day. They can be here. If they want to send us legislation this late, then maybe they have to spend a couple of extra days here. That’s not our concern. We do our job; they do theirs.

Colleagues, I’m going to leave it at that. I will vote my conscience in due course, but others want to speak. I know Senator Dupuis suggested she wanted to speak. But when the leader says that we should do things because we want to get out of here — so do I; it’s 10 to 5 — if we want to get out of here this week, let’s make our speeches and move on. Thank you.

Hon. Jane Cordy: Did you know that former Senator Carstairs, when she was leader of the Liberal caucus in the Senate a number of years ago, told the other place that they had to have all of the legislation they wanted to pass in the chamber by a specific date? It might have been June 1. I can’t quite remember, but maybe Senator Ringuette remembers. In fact, that year, the Senate rose before the House, because all the legislation they had given us by, let’s say, June 1 was passed and we left.

The members of the House of Commons were not very happy, but that didn’t happen the next year because we had all the legislation by the date that Senator Carstairs specified.

So do you think that would be a good idea?

Hon. Pierrette Ringuette: Honourable senators, it’s hard to follow Senator Plett on his good days.

I have no prepared speech, but I took note of your different comments, and I feel compelled to put in my two cents’ worth.

Senator Tannas, I totally agree with you in regard to omnibus bills. You and I were from both in different partisan caucuses when our partisan leaders agreed to accept omnibus bills. That was something like 17 years ago and omnibus bills have not stopped since.

We brought up the issue at the Rules Committee, and the Rules Committee was operating and is still operating on consensus basis. We had no consensus, so we didn’t resolve the issue of how to deal with omnibus bills in the Senate.

We’re not about to tell the other place how to deal with their legislation and how they want to do it, but we are masters of our own chamber. Every year in December and June, we talk about omnibus bills. We make remarks in our different committee reports about omnibus bills. Yet we go home and then we come back, and we’ve forgotten until the next omnibus budget bill.

So, colleagues, can we agree — at least the members of the Independent Senators Group, and as per Senator Plett’s statement earlier, he would agree with us — that when we come back in September, it is going to be our first order of priority to agree on how to deal with omnibus bills, and send that message to the other place so they know well in advance where we stand, not at the eleventh hour?

That is the first issue that we’re discussing.

By the way, isn’t it nice that we take on an issue, and we don’t stop after 15 minutes and wait two weeks to continue that discussion? Isn’t it nice that we entertain an issue, and we can all voice our opinions and deal with the situation?

That is another thing that we, as an independent Senate, have to start to deal with: How do we manage our discussions and how do we move forward with legislation and motions? Enough is enough of this “a little bit here and a little bit there.” Enough is enough of that.

Okay, I’m going off topic. But Senator Plett got me all energized.

The other issue that is really the crux of your amendment is in regard to the Canada Elections Act. Unfortunately, in all the discussions so far, nobody has brought forth the very important issue in regard to that. It is our primary document that creates democracy in Canada.

In order to create that democracy in Canada, political parties need funding. The names of people who fund political parties — because it’s in the Canada Elections Act — will be public and transparent, because our democracy demands that. If it is public and transparent, it is also subject to a cap; individuals are maximized per year regarding donations to political parties.

How can you ensure that Elections Canada will make sure that those maximums are respected? How can we make sure that our political parties are transparent in regard to donations? It is through the Canada Elections Act and through the transparency therein.

Why do you think the other place, so far, has not been able to deal with this issue of privacy versus democratic transparency?

I understand there will be pressure on them to deal with this, but I honestly believe that Canadians who make donations to a political party understand that the system will make their names public, along with the amount of their donations. That has been on the books for 30 years.

So that’s not the issue.

How will the political parties in the other place that face elections and need to make amendments to the Canada Elections Act be able to differentiate the personal information of their donors and the transparency of political party funding and the survival of our democracy?

Colleagues, I would definitely say that the other place cannot deal with this issue because of the four political parties in the other place — not in the time frame that you would like, Senator Tannas. It is mission impossible. I think they’re all just getting their heads around this because of the process in B.C.

Senator Tannas, I believe that your intentions are good. But this is not the place to move your intention in regard to getting this privacy issue done and, Senator Deacon, in regard to personal privacy. This is not where it will be accomplished.

The third message I want to convey — and I’m taking this opportunity to say so — is that when we send a message from the Senate in regard to the budget bill, it better not be on a Canada Elections Act issue. It better be on an issue that is concerning every Canadian’s pocketbook. Then, we will, from my perspective, be justified in making an amendment and sending a message to the other place in regard to what we think. It’s like how Senator Shugart put it when he said “disproportionate” — I agree with him.

Therefore, Senator Tannas and colleagues, I will not be voting for this motion on the grounds of my statement.

Thank you.

Some Hon. Senators: Nay.

Some Hon. Senators: Yea.

The Hon. the Speaker: I see two senators rising. Do we have an agreement on the length of the bell?

Hon. Colin Deacon: Will Senator Ringuette take one more question?

Senator Ringuette, just as a clarification, you do understand that the private information gathered by political parties goes well beyond the voter list and donations. It includes personal information about one’s family, their ethnicity, the language they speak, the job they have and social media — and it goes well beyond that.

My second point is that there have been very specific recommendations put forward to the government and political parties by the Privacy Commissioner and the Chief Electoral Officer about what this legislation should look like. That work has been done, and it has been done for many years.

Are you aware of those two items?

The Hon. the Speaker: We will return at 5:52 p.m. Call in the senators.

Motion in amendment of the Honourable Senator Tannas negatived on the following division:

The Senate proceeded to consideration of the fifteenth report of the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs (Bill S-12, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Sex Offender Information Registration Act and the International Transfer of Offenders Act, with amendments and observations), presented in the Senate on June 20, 2023.

The Hon. the Speaker: I think the “nays” have it.

And two honourable senators having risen:

The Hon. the Speaker: Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion in amendment?