Speech from the Throne

Honourable senators, my response to the Speech from the Throne addresses three connected issues at the forefront of public policy: Canada’s need to respond rapidly and decisively to changes in the world order, Parliament’s responsibility to oversee the powers used in that response and the importance of regulatory practices that keep pace with a fast-changing world. This is not a speech about any one bill, but colleagues will recognize its relevance to legislation we have considered and will be asked to consider. I offer it not as a discussion of parliamentary procedure for its own sake but as a framework for our ongoing review of legislation.

We should equip Canadians to act decisively, strengthen our economic resilience, develop new markets and respond to technological change. However, giving government the capacity to act must not mean diminishing Parliament’s capacity to hold it accountable.

Much of the legislation we pass gives ministers, departments and agencies authority to make regulations. We encounter this whenever we are told that a detail in a bill will be “sorted out in regulation.”

However, our responsibility does not end when the bill receives Royal Assent.

The enabling legislation determines who may make regulations, on what subjects and within what limits. The Statutory Instruments Act, or SIA, provides the broader framework for examination, registration, publication and parliamentary scrutiny.

Delegation is necessary. Parliament cannot reasonably write every technical specification needed to implement legislation. However, the more we rely on delegated authority, the more important its oversight becomes.

That, colleagues, is the role of the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations, or REGS, on which I have the privilege of serving as joint chair. Senators and members of the House of Commons work together, supported by specialist legal counsel.

Our ordinary scrutiny takes place after regulations have been made. The central question is not whether we would have chosen the same policy. It is whether delegated authority has been exercised lawfully and appropriately, with proper regard for rights, procedural requirements and clarity.

The committee seeks explanations, corrections and amendments. It can report unresolved concerns to Parliament and, in appropriate cases, recommend disallowance through the statutory procedure involving both houses.

Our work may not make headlines, but a low public profile and low attendance in the chamber tonight should not be mistaken for low constitutional importance.

Parliament can delegate the making of regulations. It cannot delegate its responsibility to oversee them.

That responsibility makes me concerned about a disturbing pattern in recent legislation: important new executive powers accompanied by provisions excluding particular instruments from the ordinary statutory framework for scrutiny.

Consider the Building Canada Act, which we just discussed. It excludes from the Statutory Instruments Act the orders that add projects to the national interest list, change their names or descriptions, or remove them. It also excludes the ministerial document deemed to constitute specified project authorizations.

The 2026 amendments to the Red Tape Reduction Act provide another example. Subject to conditions, ministers may grant temporary exemptions from statutory and regulatory requirements to facilitate testing in clean technology and financial technology. Orders made under that power are expressly excluded from the definition of a statutory instrument.

These laws contain other publication, reporting and accountability provisions. They do not remove all parliamentary oversight. However, those arrangements are not equivalent to preserving the ordinary, automatic referral of statutory instruments to REGS.

Why should a power to exempt someone from requirements Parliament has enacted be accompanied by an exemption from the normal mechanism for scrutinizing delegated power?

Why should the importance of a project diminish the importance of checking whether authority has been exercised properly? It’s important to remember that REGS is not a pre-approval stage through which regulations must pass before taking effect. Its scrutiny follows their making. Removing that scrutiny does not reduce a step in an approval process.

A departure from the usual framework may sometimes be justified, but government should explain why it is necessary and demonstrate that the remaining safeguards are adequate.

A clause excluding an instrument from the SIA should prompt questions from every committee examining the bill and every parliamentarian asked to support it.

This is not about trusting or distrusting a particular minister. Powers can and will outlast the circumstances that prompted their creation and the governments that requested them.

Scrutiny is not red tape. It is part of the responsibility that comes with exercising public power.

Other parliaments offer useful examples of how to examine these questions before legislation is passed. In the U.K., the House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee examines bills for inappropriate delegation and inadequate parliamentary scrutiny. The committee’s reports inform consideration of the bill while it can still be amended.

This committee does not replace Parliament’s legislative judgment. They help parliamentarians exercise it by providing specialist assessments of the authority they are being asked to confer.

We should strengthen that function in our own Parliament. Government bills should come with a clear explanation of the powers being delegated, why delegation is necessary, what limits apply and how Parliament will oversee their exercise.

This was a question I would have asked the ministers if I had had time to do so.

This need not begin with creating another committee. We should examine how existing arrangements can be strengthened, with clear responsibilities, sufficient legal support and reports available in time to inform consideration of a bill’s clauses. Scrutiny before powers are granted and scrutiny after they are exercised serve different purposes. Both are needed.

Honourable senators, protecting scrutiny does not mean resisting innovation. Parliamentary oversight should help government use new tools responsibly, not prevent it from doing so.

That brings me to incorporation by reference and the contribution that recognized Canadian standards can make to better regulation.

Incorporation by reference allows a regulation to refer to an outside document rather than reproduce its contents. The relevant requirements can thereby acquire legal force. For example, a regulation might require compliance with specified provisions of a technical standard rather than reproduce every specification.

The 2015 amendments to the Statutory Instruments Act expressly authorized incorporation by reference, subject to statutory limits. They also required incorporated material to be accessible.

Canada has an established standards system on which regulators can draw. A National Standard of Canada is developed by an organization accredited by the Standards Council of Canada. Why should government reproduce suitable technical work when it can responsibly use that work by reference? The opportunity is to devote regulatory effort to assessing what serves the public interest rather than repeatedly drafting technical specifications from scratch.

Recognition, however, is not a substitute for judgment. Government must decide whether a standard is suitable for the objective Parliament has authorized it to pursue.

The distinction is between drawing on outside expertise and handing over responsibility for public policy. We should welcome the former without accepting the latter.

That distinction explains REGS’s longstanding interest in incorporation by reference and the question of “accessibility.”

In June 2018, our former colleague Senator Joseph Day reminded this chamber of a basic principle: People expected to obey the law must have a reasonable opportunity to discover what it requires. He highlighted concerns about incorporated documents that had to be purchased, were difficult to obtain or were not available in both official languages.

On May 25, 2026, the committee accepted the government’s response to this longstanding accessibility file and agreed to close it.

Counsel reported that Treasury Board had confirmed completion of its guidance in January 2025. Counsel had reviewed it and confirmed that it addressed cost, language and point-in-time access, which is the ability to consult the version applicable on a particular date.

The government has not adopted a statutory definition of “accessible.” It maintains that a single definition would be too rigid for the different documents that can be incorporated. Instead, the guidance addresses circumstances involving copyright, cost, documents available in only one official language and difficulty obtaining earlier versions.

The committee accepted this guidance-based response as sufficient to resolve its request.

This is parliamentary scrutiny doing more than just identifying problems. The committee pressed for answers, examined the response and accepted a practical way forward.

The next step is to put the accepted approach into practice and build on it.

In 2024, Senator Colin Deacon and I hosted a workshop on standards in government rulemaking, bringing together standards organizations and regulators. Participants explored how standards could support more timely regulation and reduce unnecessary duplication.

Workshop participants argued that Canada was underutilizing these tools. Some told us that long-standing accessibility concerns and the committee’s earlier positions had contributed to caution within parts of the public service. That is why the committee’s May 25 acceptance of the government’s response is so important. It provides officials with the confidence to use incorporation by reference responsibly.

However, I would go further. It is not just that incorporation by reference can be used in the flexible way that the government has proposed and the committee has accepted. It is also that regulators should systematically examine whether a suitable National Standard of Canada or another recognized international standard already exists before developing a new technical requirement.

Where a relevant standard exists, the published regulatory explanation should state whether it is being adopted, adapted or not used — and why.

That would not require regulators to accept standards that fail to meet Canadian needs; however, it would require them to assess existing technical work before reproducing it.

Our objective should be to use Canada’s standards system effectively while avoiding unnecessary differences from suitable approaches used elsewhere.

The Cabinet Directive on Regulation already directs departments to consider incorporation by reference, including internationally accepted standards. It addresses accessibility, official languages and continuing review.

The task now is to turn encouragement into consistent, documented consideration, supported by the expertise and resources needed for sound decisions.

The Treasury Board has announced a review of the directive that includes considering stronger expectations to use existing regulatory approaches before developing uniquely Canadian solutions. I welcome that opening and have encouraged the President of the Treasury Board and his office to more deliberately consider the role of standards.

Greater use of standards must preserve public responsibility. Regulators should assess a standard’s suitability and the inclusiveness of its development. Technical expertise matters, but so do the perspectives of consumers, workers, persons with disabilities, Indigenous Peoples and others affected.

We should work with the Standards Council of Canada and standards organizations to anticipate regulatory needs earlier, including language, accessibility and arrangements for revisions. Access must be practical. Regulators should maintain reliable inventories, provide clear directions to incorporated material, arrange access to relevant historical versions and meet applicable official language obligations.

There must also be a sustainable basis for developing and maintaining standards. Incorporated material may remain subject to third-party copyright; public access and intellectual property, therefore, need to be addressed together.

Government should work with standards organizations on licensing, translation and archiving arrangements that let people consult the requirements they must obey while supporting the organizations that produce them.

Regulations incorporating standards should remain subject to parliamentary scrutiny. Moving technical detail into an outside document must not become another route around accountability.

Honourable senators, these arguments belong together. Canada needs the capacity to respond decisively to a changing world. That calls for effective regulation, capable institutions and accountability, not a choice from among them.

The Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations’ resolution of the accessibility file shows that scrutiny can accommodate practical solutions. That is very different from excluding executive instruments from the ordinary scrutiny framework.

For colleagues less familiar with the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations, its work deserves your attention and support. Its mandate deserves protection. When concerns remain unanswered, the committee needs both houses to support it.

When we examine bills, we should look beyond their promises —

I’m sorry, senator. Your time has expired.

May I have two moments?

When we examine bills, we should look beyond their promises to the powers through which they will be implemented. What authority are we granting? What limits apply? What scrutiny are we preserving? What are we being asked to surrender? Those questions belong to every parliamentarian; they belong to all of us. Thank you.

Senator Batters, would you like to ask a question?

You need to ask for more time to answer questions.

You said five minutes? I didn’t hear that.

Go ahead, Senator Batters.

It was the practice to meet every other week for two hours or as long as it takes to go through the agenda. We have a number of special problems in the current Parliament.

The first is that it is a joint committee, as you’ve observed. For a time, we did not have members from the House of Commons. We had to wait for our colleagues in the other place to fill their seats, if you will, before the entire committee could meet.

Second, we have, apparently, a lower priority when it comes to accessing committee rooms, and we share a Monday-morning slot with other joint committee meetings, notably those of the Standing Joint Committee on the Library of Parliament. Technically, we alternate access to that room, and there are weeks when the designated slot given to us falls on a day when we don’t sit or are in a break week and so on.

I can tell you, Senator Batters, that it is my intention — and I believe I have the support of all the committee members — to meet as often as we can to go through the large backlog of regulations that have piled up and require our scrutiny to ensure that they are consistent with the laws from which they emanate.

Thank you, Senator Batters. I hope you will advocate with your caucus as well to ensure that there is that advocacy, that push from the House side and from the Conservative Party, and that when seats are vacant, they are filled as swiftly as possible.

Honourable senators, four years ago, in 2022, I had the honour of giving my first speech in reply to the Speech from the Throne. At the time, I urged Canada to see Africa differently, not as a peripheral continent in our foreign policy, but as a leading strategic partner. Four years later, what progress has been made?

First, I had the honour of becoming your co-chair of the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Association, a position I still hold today. I want to thank you, dear colleagues, for putting your trust in me as a parliamentarian who, in 2022, was a rookie senator with no parliamentary diplomacy experience at all.

Canada’s Africa Strategy was first adopted in 2025. The strategy aims to strengthen diplomatic, economic and human relations with African countries. Two high-level dialogues were held with the African Union in 2022 and 2024. A permanent observer for Canada to the African Union has been appointed. The posts of Special Envoy for Africa and the Sahel were created. Canada upgraded its office in Benin to an embassy and its office in Zambia to a high commission.

The President of the African Development Bank, Sidi Ould Tah, and the Secretary-General of the African Continental Free Trade Area, Wamkele Mene, were officially received in Canada. More recently, the Minister of Foreign Affairs took her first official visit to Benin and Ivory Coast.

In 2026, there were also moves to strengthen ties with Morocco, the announcement of direct Air Canada flights to Nigeria, and a meeting between Prime Minister Carney and the Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote, ranked by Forbes as Africa’s richest man. These initiatives are to be commended, even if they’ve not yet yielded any concrete results.

In December 2026, the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade tabled a report entitled “Canada-Africa: Seizing a Strategic Opportunity.” I am seizing this opportunity to recognize the tremendous work done by all members of this committee, which I am privileged to be part of and which is chaired by Senator Peter Boehm. During the course of this historic study, we spent 26 hours hearing from over 65 witnesses. The 21 recommendations set out in this report are unequivocal: Canada must fully engage in Africa or risk being left behind. I repeat: Canada must fully engage in Africa or risk being left behind.

One of the report’s key findings is clear: Africa represents a strategic opportunity for Canada, yet our engagement has all too often been fragmented and inconsistent. That is why the report calls for a bold, coordinated and sustained approach.

The urgency is clear: While Canada debates, our partners are already building strategic economic, commercial and diplomatic positions across Africa.

Honourable senators, our major partners and competitors have launched ambitious initiatives. The European Union launched the Global Gateway Strategy and the Africa-Europe Investment Package, which includes about 150 billion euros in investments on the African continent. Japan, as part of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD 8), has announced $30 billion U.S. in public and private investments. France and Kenya co-hosted the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi in 2026, which was chaired by the President of France. Investments in Africa announced at the summit amounted to 23 billion euros. In 2024, Italy launched the Mattei Plan for Africa, which funds projects and engages Italian businesses in strategic sectors in Africa. Even the United States recently extended the African Growth and Opportunity Act, or AGOA, until 2028 to maintain preferential access by several dozens of African countries to the U.S. market. China, however, remains Africa’s largest trading partner and continues to grow its economic presence across the continent. The actions of major economic powers demonstrate Africa’s key position on the world stage.

When His Majesty King Charles III opened this 45th Parliament, he said the following:

 . . . by staying true to Canadian values, Canada can build new alliances and a new economy that serves all Canadians.

Honourable senators, I firmly believe that strengthening our partnership with Africa is also key to these new alliances. However, the figures show that we have begun to make progress, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. According to the Office of the Chief Economist, trade between Canada and Africa reached nearly $19 billion in 2025, representing an increase of 22.5%. However, it still accounts for less than 1% of Canada’s total exports. In other words, despite the progress made, the potential remains largely untapped.

I sometimes hear it said that Africa doesn’t yet offer a sufficient return to justify greater commitment from Canada. This assertion defies basic logic. No one diversifies their portfolio by investing only where they already have a presence. The Government of Canada has set a target of doubling Canadian exports to non-U.S. markets over the next decade. If we are serious about diversification, we must accept that it is a long-term endeavour. It is precisely against this backdrop that we must assess our presence in Africa.

Today, the continent’s population exceeds 1.5 billion. By the middle of the century, in 2050, nearly one in four of the planet’s inhabitants will be in Africa. Africa will by then have the world’s largest labour force. Today, however, risk is often cited as a reason for inaction on the African continent. In Africa’s case, this risk is often more perceived than real. We continue —

Senator Gerba, I regret interrupting you.

Honourable senators, it is now seven o’clock. Pursuant to rule 3-3(1), I am obliged to leave the chair until eight o’clock, when we will resume, unless it is your wish, honourable senators, to not see the clock.

Is it agreed to not see the clock?

Some Hon. Senators: Agreed.

Some Hon. Senators: No.

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: I hear a “no.”

Honourable senators, leave was not granted. The sitting is, therefore, suspended, and I will leave the chair until eight o’clock.

Risk is often used to excuse inaction. In the case of Africa, the risk is often more perceived than real. Sometimes, we still look at the continent through the lens of old perceptions, even though Africa’s economic reality has changed dramatically.

If the risk was as insurmountable as people claim, why would the European Union, Japan and France be announcing tens of billions of dollars in investments?

Other major economies don’t deny the risk, but simply choose to manage it and work around it.

Across the world, governments and international financial institutions use surety mechanisms to reduce risks borne by private investors.

The Senate’s report recommends that Canada strengthen its support for Export Development Canada, or EDC, to promote diversification by our companies in Africa.

The vastness of the African continent, with its 54 countries, is often used as an excuse for inaction.

Canada doesn’t have to cover the entire continent, but it needs a presence somewhere. It needs to identify partner countries, priority regions and sectors where it excels, whether in agriculture, artificial intelligence, infrastructure, clean energy, education, global health or critical minerals. We have to make a choice.

The Senate report also recommends a multilateral approach to our relations with the African continent, including relations with the African Union and regional economic communities.

Honourable colleagues, while others are investing billions of dollars, Canada’s economic presence remains modest. We have laid the foundation. Now, we must build for the long term. African countries are also looking for reliable partners, and Canada has an opportunity to be one. Our country has strong institutions, a stable business environment, recognized expertise and an enviable international reputation, but reputation alone is no longer enough.

One of Canada’s greatest untapped assets is our citizens —

Senator Gerba, the time allowed for debate has expired. Are you asking for leave to finish your speech?

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Is leave granted?

Thank you, honourable senators. One of Canada’s greatest untapped assets is our citizens. More than one million Canadians trace their roots to Africa. They form a formidable bridge between our country and Africa, and they’re eager to become more involved.

Honourable colleagues, I’d now like to highlight two concrete actions that will help accelerate the implementation of Canada’s Africa Strategy.

First, the government must now secure funding for the Africa Strategy and adopt an implementation plan with clear timelines, measurable objectives and a system for monitoring results. The Senate report addresses that.

Second, I recommend that the government establish a Canada-Africa advisory council on business relations, modelled on the American, French and British examples, bringing together representatives from the private sector, the diaspora and Canadian and African business communities.

The council’s mandate would be to identify business opportunities, pinpoint barriers to trade and investment and advise the government on measures to strengthen Canada’s economic presence in Africa. When I rose in this chamber in 2022, some viewed Africa as a market of the future. In 2026, honourable senators, Africa has become a key player in today’s global economy. Canada must acknowledge this and participate in Africa’s economic transformation. Thank you. Asanté Sana.

Honourable senators, I have given many speeches here in this chamber on the issue of advance requests, and I was disheartened to see, yet again, that there was no mention of this compelling issue in the Speech from the Throne. I am hopeful that announcements may be forthcoming, but I am also told that patience is a virtue, so bear with me this one last time.

An advance request is a written declaration allowing someone who is not facing imminent death but whose death is foreseeable due to an irremediable medical condition, such as Alzheimer’s, to make an advance request that would allow them to ask to have medical assistance in dying, or MAID, administered if they reach a point where they are unable to give final consent.

Advance requests would help save so many from spending the last days of their lives in pain and suffering, unaware of their circumstances, saying and doing things they otherwise never would have, unable to feed themselves, taste, feel, understand or experience joy. All too often, what they experience is pain.

Colleagues, I believe it must be our personal right to make end-of-life decisions for ourselves and to do so in advance, making our wishes clear and relieving our families and loved ones of the burden of making these difficult decisions and choices in cases such as Alzheimer’s.

It is also our responsibility as legislators to sort out the respective roles of governments, doctors, families and, most importantly, the individual, in choices about the end of our lives. It is a complex and deeply emotional issue, I know.

We deal with death in many forms every day of our lives: the death of a relationship, the death of innocence or the death of a loved one. These experiences are painful, but they may also help ready us for a peaceful end to our own lives and help us face that inevitability with some grace.

I have come to my views on this, in large measure, by watching my parents die in two very different but equally dreadful ways: my father to painful cancers and my mother to Alzheimer’s. Their suffering was unnecessary and preventable. To be spared that inevitable fate was the only kindness they asked for when their minds were clear, but it was not to be. The laws denied them the right to be heard and the right to have their end dignified.

These painful journeys are taken by families every day in this country. Canadians with incurable or irreversible medical conditions suffer needlessly in hospital beds or care homes, and far too many are alone because their families are miles or countries away, and funds may be limited.

This is just wrong, and it is, quite literally, a fate worse than death. Without the possibility of advance requests for MAID, we have seen people with diseases like Alzheimer’s take their own lives, fearful that if they waited, there would be no option, or worse, they would be left spending the last moments of their lives confused and afraid that they would lose consciousness and be forced to live on without awareness or with their faculties in some diminished state.

The truly brutal Catch-22 is that, right now, Canadians diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer’s are often denied the right to even request medical assistance in dying, or MAID, from the moment of their diagnosis, even though they are still symptom-free and able to make a sound decision.

But for any of us who have witnessed the slow descent into hell that is Alzheimer’s, this is an uncivilized way to treat our loved ones. Many will likely spend their final remaining days with strangers who were once their loved ones and, perhaps most unfairly, with flashes of awareness that they are no longer who they once were. They will lose their dignity, their character, their personality and their choices.

Many of us have lived it or alongside it, and we are concerned about our own futures. We are asking the fundamental questions that are always the what-ifs of aging. We all fear the unknown in life, and it is the unknown about the end of life that is the greatest fear of all.

Alzheimer’s is a likely diagnosis for me given my family history. I have no children or husband to advocate for me, so the decisions for my end of life fall with, well, who knows? But without the right to an advance request, I have no control or say — no choice — about my life’s final chapter.

We have the right to ask for no extraordinary measures if we are in an accident or undergoing surgery, but we have no right to say that if we are sentenced to a life without function or awareness that we want to be able to ask for an end. No one who loses capacity unexpectedly should be forced to live the rest of their life in some “netherland.” That’s why we have do-not-resuscitate orders.

I see an advance request as exercising that same right. Our well-stated, well-documented decisions about our own lives should be respected and upheld, even after losing our conscious ability to reaffirm that decision in the moment.

Some believe this is an oversimplified understanding of the issue, but I disagree. I hope they will be able to understand that my basic human right to choose my fate and to allow my dignity when I reach my point of departure is a human right.

Some doctors may feel uneasy about advance requests. This is an important concern. But I am troubled that we have placed so much focus on safeguards for doctors that we have only created greater gaps in accessibility for patients. No one will ask them to do something that they feel is a breach of their oath, but they should be obliged to at least refer patients to someone who will respect the patient’s wishes and the needs of that person.

But this issue has always been about choice for doctors and for individuals who want to have choices in life and choices about how it ends. As legislators, I believe we owe it to our families, our most vulnerable, our medical practitioners and, of course, ourselves to secure that right to a quality of life and to a quality of death where possible.

When we have worked hard to do and be our best and when we have carved out a good life, there is no reason why a life filled with dignity needs to be met with an undignified end.

As the old phrase goes, “Do not go gentle into that good night.” Senators, I ask you: Please do not let us go gentle into this good fight for dignity in our final days. Thank you.