Senator Downe: Well, colleagues, the members of Parliament have dropped the ball. Their job is not to prance around during Question Period looking for clips. Their job is to review legislation. That’s our responsibility as well. I will remind some of the newer senators here that when I first came to the Senate, we had a very similar situation of the New Veterans Charter. It went through the House of Commons in two minutes and came to the Senate, and the Senate failed to do the job. It passed in a total of five hours. Most of that time — four hours and 50-some minutes — was in the Senate. Years later, we found out from the Parliamentary Budget Officer that those changes cost veterans, who were injured in service to the country — and their families — millions of dollars in lost benefits because the Senate and the House of Commons did not do their jobs.

We’re back in a very similar circumstance. The onus is now on the Senate — the much-criticized Senate — to do the work that the House of Commons has not done. I know that colleagues on the committee and the whole institution will do that. I hear you, Senator Gold, and this is my question: Can you tell us that we’ll have the time necessary to do that work so Canadians are not short-changed by this legislation — as they were by previous rushed legislation from not only the House of Commons but the Senate?