Senator Woo: Thank you for the question. I want to thank Senator Bellemare for her consistent reflections on how to modernization the Senate and how to make it more independent. She is one of our deepest thinkers on these issues, and I salute her for that.

Before I answer her specific question, let me challenge one of her premises. She said that the group negotiation process and the group committee allocation process essentially leaves the senator out of that decision making. That is not true. It is not true in two respects.

First, I speak for the ISG. ISG members designed the process. I am the servant of the process. ISG members agreed on what the process would be and asked the facilitators and the secretariat to administer it so that they had a say in the very shaping of the process.

Second, having shaped the process, they expressed their views on which committees they wanted. I’m sure it’s the same for other groups; they have some similar system — first choice, second choice and so on. So they had a lot of say.

But once they did that, then they subjected themselves to the rules that they designed — many of them, because not everyone was there at the creation of the rules — but most ISG members were involved in the design of a system that they signed on to, which they then participated in.

That is why there is an obligation to be respectful and responsible in following the process.

Before I get to your actual question, my second point is this: While I have described a kind of iron logic that requires seats to be given up when a senator leaves a group, you may have heard me say that this is not a logic that has to be employed every time a senator leaves a group. In fact, there could be, and perhaps likely would be, many circumstances where a senator leaving a group — I can only speak for the ISG — would not be asked to relinquish that seat because there’s no excess demand within the ISG, or maybe there is such a compelling case for that member to stay on the committee that there is no need to apply the non-portability rule.

But it is the principle of non-portability that has to be put up front, because that is how the system can have integrity.

Let me get to your question of how we see a more independent Senate. This is a huge question, of course, and I thought I touched on some aspects of it, but let me repeat my central point: There’s no incompatibility between a group that is cohesive, that has strong rules of procedure and conduct — no contradiction between a group that implements its procedures in a disciplined and rigorous way — and senators being independent to vote as they please, to say what they please and to introduce motions and bills. There is no contradiction between having strong groups and strong senators. That is basically the point I’m trying to make.

Some people think that having strong groups means a diminution of the individual senator’s rights. This is the view we heard. A group is there to serve the senator; the senator is not there to serve the group. Obviously, there is a balance. But if you ask me where I lean, I lean in the direction of having well-functioning groups based on strong principles which protect the independence and the equality of senators.