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.