Honourable senators, let me start my speech and continue after the break.

Honourable senators, last week we adopted the Selection Committee report that results in the formation of Senate standing committees. The first report of SELE named senators to the various standing committees according to the proportions that each group constitutes in the Senate.

The ISG received roughly 48% of the seats on each committee, the CPC received about 20%, the PSG 17% and the CSG 14%. Non-affiliated senators who wanted to be on committees were offered seats from the allocations that were assigned to the various groups.

Every senator who wanted to sit on a committee was offered one or more seats. No one was excluded. But how did a senator get the particular seat on the committee that he or she was assigned? Did that senator have a special claim to the seat?

Does any senator have a special right to a seat on a given committee? The answer is obviously no. We know this because all of us went through a process in the last two weeks of selecting committees that we wanted to sit on, and working through the inevitable conflicts that arise when there are more senators wanting to be on a committee than there are seats available on that committee.

Different groups use different protocols for allocating seats to their members. But I am sure every group had to deal with some overlapping interests among members, with the result that most senators did not get all the committees they wanted to be on. That is certainly true of the ISG.

While every ISG member got their first choice of committee, few also got their second and third choices.

Which brings us to the subject of the second Selection report that we are currently debating.

Let’s be clear, firstly, that this is a report of the Selection Committee, duly adopted by a majority of the members on that committee, consisting of members from all groups including nonaffiliated senators.

The reason Selection issued a standalone report on this issue as opposed to incorporating the issue into the first SELE report is because the PSG insisted on separating the issue of portability from the issue of committee formation.

The leaders of the other three groups — the Conservatives, the CSG, and the ISG — agreed with nonportability of seats, as they had for sessional orders in the previous parliament.

Listening to the polemics on Tuesday night, you might have come away with the impression that the suspension of portability is an ISG plot, masterminded by power-hungry facilitators at the helm of this group. In fact, three of the four groups in the Senate have supported some version of this report in previous sessions, and the Senate has voted in favour of non-portability each and every time it has come up in this chamber.

Honourable senators, the committee seat you obtained last week came through a negotiated process within your group that very likely deprived another member of the same group from having that seat. To put it in reverse, the seat you really wanted but did not get is because of the selection process your group established and that you willingly participated in. As they say, “You win some; you lose some.” However, that was the process you agreed to. It therefore follows, I believe, that if you choose to leave the group, you should, as a matter of fairness, return the seat to the group so that, if needed, the seat can be allocated to a member who is waiting in the queue.

This is why, honourable senators, the issue we are debating today is not about the independence of the Senate or the equality of senators. It is about the much more mundane — but foundational — concept of fair play and procedural integrity. Every time we have to reconstitute committees, as we are doing at the start of the Forty-fourth Parliament, we have to solve the problem of scarcity — scarcity of committee seats in the face of excess demand from senators. You can tell I’m an economist.

As it turns out, we have decided to solve this problem by allocating the seats by proportionality to recognized groups in the Senate and then leaving the groups to work out how they divvy up the seats they were assigned. This is about boring math, not some high-minded principle as the dissenters to the Selection Committee report have asserted.

On the subject of math, let me offer a rebuttal to Senators Mercer, Cordy and Bellemare who have made claims based on math without actually doing the math. They state correctly that any movement of senators from one group to another will change the proportionality of groups in the Senate, and they use that as a point to argue for portability. If you actually do the math, however, you will find that the movement of one or two senators does very little to change the actual allocation of seats on our committees. I have done the math, and I can confirm that the Independent Senators Group, or ISG, would have exactly the same number of members on committees of 9, 12 and 15 if one or even two members were to leave our group. This is akin to the retirement or passing of a senator, which does not precipitate an immediate change in the distribution of seats on a committee.

If a large number of senators were to leave a group, the proportionality numbers would be materially impacted and a change in seat distribution would be warranted. However, this is not unlike the appointment of new senators, which also affects proportionality calculations.

The point is that we don’t recalculate proportionality every time there is a shift in numbers — not even, I would say, when the shifts are quite large as was the case during the last Parliament when the ISG grew by nearly 20% even as our allocation of seats on committees remained static.

So much for math. Let me now return to the high-minded arguments that my honourable colleagues made on Tuesday night about the independence and equality of senators.

We heard from Senator Mercer that “a senator is a senator is a senator.” As tautologies go, this is especially seductive, but what does it mean? More to the point, how is it relevant to the debate at hand?

Senator Mercer would presumably argue that a senator deprived of his or her particular committee seat is less equal compared to other senators. But from what dispensation did the senator derive the right to have that committee seat in the first place? Did the Governor General grant it to him? Is it written in her summons? Do we have a rule that makes that claim? Of course not. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, I don’t believe there is even a rule that says senators must sit on committees.

To be clear, I believe that all senators have a right to sit on committees, but I do not believe that any senator has a right to sit on a particular committee.

We heard again on Tuesday night the mistaken assertion that this report deprives senators of the right to sit on a committee. It does not. All senators have the right to sit on a committee, including senators who are not part of a group or caucus if they want to sit on a committee. There is no violation of the equality principle.

The dissenters would have you believe that equality extends to a senator’s right to a particular committee seat. However, why should that be the case? More importantly, how can that possibly be the case when there are more senators desirous of committee membership than there are seats on that committee?

The underlying point here, colleagues, is that while senators may have a right to sit on committees, they do not have an entitlement to any particular committee seat. Seats on particular committees can only be assigned through what is essentially a process of negotiation. For a senator to then assert his or her unalienable right to that seat is a contravention of the negotiated agreement, a fallacy of logic and an abuse of procedural fairness.

I would go even further to say that this conception of portability actually violates the equality principle and undermines Senator Mercer’s mantra that “a senator is a senator is a senator.”

The dissenters also argue that this report is about the independence of senators. This is another red herring. Insofar as I am concerned, senators lose their committee seats when they leave a group not because of their views, but because of the agreement they signed up for when they joined a group. To put it differently, the seat is retrieved from a senator because it wasn’t theirs to start with.

This is not to say that seats will be taken away each time a senator leaves a group. If there is no pent-up demand for the seat from within the group, there is no need to retrieve the seat. The departing senator can continue to serve on it. Retrieving seats is not about vengeance or punishment. It is about respecting a process and working on a case-by-case basis.

I would add that the same applies when a senator joins a group after committee seats have already been assigned as will be the case when the new appointments to the Senate — which we are likely to see in the weeks ahead — take place.

If any of the new members join the ISG, I know the new leadership will make all efforts to find seats for them that correspond to their interests. That, too, is a process of internal negotiation that requires an equal measure of a clearly defined process and senatorial collegiality.

You will recall from Tuesday night’s debate that a number of senators dispute my view that we get our seats through our groups by way of a negotiation process. They claim that committee seats don’t come from groups; rather, they come from the Senate. Ergo, there is no need to return the seat to the group if a senator should choose to leave that group. I expect that some of our newer colleagues are puzzled by this argument, so I will explain it. However, that may have to wait until after the dinner break because I’m looking for the Speaker to now rise and invite us to see the clock.

Pursuant to rule 3-3(1), I’m required to leave the chair until 7 p.m. unless there is leave that we continue. Accordingly, the sitting is suspended until 7 p.m.

Honourable senators, the point at which I relieved you from your hunger pangs was when I was explaining the difference between my view of how we get our committee seats and the dissenters’ view. If you are puzzled about the dissenters’ view, it is the following: That whatever deal caucuses and groups may negotiate and, how that deal may be expressed in the Selection Committee report, it is the Senate that must give its blessing before the report and the deal can be effected.

The argument we heard on Tuesday night from a number of colleagues was, “No, no, no. The groups have nothing to do with giving you seats; it’s the Senate that gives you committee seats.”

But let me ask you this: Did the Senate as a whole come up with the deal? Did the Senate establish the criteria for prioritizing one senator over another for a given seat on a committee? Did the Senate as a whole establish the process by which conflicts over seats on a committee would be resolved? Of course not. All of the difficult work was left to the groups and caucuses. There is no escaping the fact that it is the groups that came up with the mechanism for allocating seats to members.

Indeed, that is why the Selection Committee exists: as a way to formally introduce agreements to the Senate that have been made by the groups and caucuses. To then say that one has no responsibility to the group because the Senate made the final decision is, at best, a dodge or, worse, a dereliction.

It’s a little bit like saying, “You don’t have to pay the real estate brokerage a commission on the house that they helped you negotiate a good price on because the ultimate decision to sell the house was in the hands of the previous owner.”

Now, if you still need convincing, let’s imagine a scenario where the Senate actually rejects a Selection Committee report on the formation of committees. In fact, think about what would have happened if last week’s first report of the Selection Committee had been rejected by the Senate. Do you think the Senate would then resolve into a Committee of the Whole to try and decide who sits on which committee? Of course not.

What would happen is that groups and caucuses would have to go back to the negotiating table to hammer out a fresh deal to assign seats to their members based on the new deal, and they would have to again bring it to the Selection Committee as a report to be tabled in the Senate.

There is no escaping the fact that committee seats are negotiated among groups, and the filling of those seats is a process that is internal to the group. It is in this sense that a committee seat belongs to the group rather than to the senator.

This is not a statement about favouring groups over individuals. It is a statement about the reality of how Senate committee seats are allocated.

Colleagues, I will grant that there is a way in which one could argue that portability is an issue of independence, as our Progressive Senate Group colleagues have argued, but it is in the narrow sense that senators insist on being liberated from any responsibility to the group from which the seat was obtained. In effect, these senators believe that they have an absolute right to that particular seat on the committee regardless of how the seat was obtained, never mind that other senators were deprived of that very seat because they too followed the agreed-upon protocol for seat assignment within the group.

In my opinion, though, this is not senatorial independence; it is senatorial libertarianism.

For most observers outside the Senate, this debate is arcane and seemingly trivial, but I think it gets at some important underlying questions about what it means to have a more independent Senate.

A good way to begin thinking about this question is to consider the phrase employed by Senator Mercer and Senator Cordy: that the group exists to serve senators, not the other way around. That sounds almost as good as a senator is a senator is a senator. But what does it mean?

Is it that senators join a group solely for the purpose of extracting benefits that are distributed by the Senate via that group? Is the purpose of being a member of the Conservatives or a member of the Independent Senators Group or the Canadian Senators Group or the PSG principally to get a committee seat? Is it to get on the executive of a parliamentary association; to be considered for overseas travel; to access prime office space in the East Block or Victoria building? Is that what you mean by “the group is there to serve the senator”?

Colleagues, is it not conceivable, even desirable, that a senator should think about his or her membership in the group as one which includes serving the purposes of the group? Have we become so atomistic and self-absorbed that we see our role only as freewheeling independent senators with no responsibility to a larger collective?

Is the future of the Senate one in which groups are purely platforms to assist members in carrying out transactions? That would seem to me to be a very shallow view of Senate reform, and a self-centred one too.

Perhaps I’m betraying my cultural roots, but I believe in the importance and value of a collective and of the responsibility that comes with belonging to a group. I joined a group not just because of what the group could do for me but for how it gave me the opportunity to become a better senator by working with like-minded colleagues.

Now, this is the point in my speech where some of you may be thinking, “Senator Woo wants to take us back to the bad old days of caucuses.” Since I’m the outgoing facilitator of the ISG, what I say has little bearing on the future direction of my group. But in any case, the bogeyman argument that stronger groups translate into abusive caucus behaviour is yet another red herring.

I understand some senators are still recovering from the PTSD of abusive caucus behaviour. But it is entirely possible for senators to exercise independent decision making on bills and motions while belonging to a group that values working together and has rules to foster collaboration based on fairness, respect and decency. That is in fact how I would define the ISG. Fairness, respect, collegiality and democratic practices, even in the context of a highly structured group, are not antithetical to an independent Senate.

In this context, I was troubled to hear in Senator Cordy’s speech her insinuation of some sinister motivation behind the Selection Committee report that is before us. She suggests that in supporting this report, the ISG is trying to prevent senators from being more independent. I reject this insinuation categorically. In what universe does fair play have to conflict with independence? Are senators who respect and abide with fairness of procedure not exercising a form of independence that includes the responsibility that comes with it?

Some of you probably feel that portability is a necessary condition for a more modern and independent Senate, and you are inclined to vote against the report because of that sentiment. You know, the very term “portability” has a nice ring to it. It has positive connotations, and it seems to go with the concept of independence. I can in fact think of situations where portability would be the desired model for committee seat assignment. But that does not mean portability is right for all models of committee seat assignment and certainly not for the current model that we employ.

The fact is when portability clashes with fairness, I think fairness should prevail. Another way of putting it is as follows: Does your right to stay on the committee of your choice trump your responsibility to the group from which you derive your seat? How you answer this question will depend on your relative weighting of individual versus group rights. This is an ancient problem in philosophy. I accept that some of you prioritize your individual rights, and that is fair enough, but I do not accept that this report undermines the independence of the Senate or the equality of senators.

Let me move to the next red herring. What should we make of the fact that the current rules allow for portability? Previous speakers have pointed out that portability is a decades-old practice of the Senate, and they are right. But defending portability on the grounds that it is tradition is very different from defending portability on the grounds that it makes sense. With due respect, I have heard a lot from senators about the importance of adherence to a traditional practice, but they have said very little about why the practice makes sense in the current context of how we actually assign seats to senators. It would seem that they are arguing in favour of tradition for tradition’s sake, which is a curious position for pro-modernization senators to take.

At best, the argument in favour of portability based on the fact that it’s currently in the rules isn’t really an argument. It’s simply a restatement of the status quo. If you are for modernization, then you have to be open to the idea that some of our rules are not fit for purpose. Rule 12-2(3) on portability is one such rule that is ripe for reconsideration.

It is even more curious that the proponents of this rule 12-2(3) are generally silent on rule 12-5. Allow me to get a little technical here. Rule 12-5 allows the leadership of a caucus or group to replace a senator on the committee with the stroke of a pen, regardless of whether that senator is leaving the caucus or group. In the hierarchy of draconian actions, rule 12-5 surely trumps 12-2(3). But it is in the rules, and it has been in the rules for at least as long as rule 12-2(3). In fact, portability would be useless to a senator who was stripped of his or her seat before that senator had a chance to leave the group.

I’m not advocating for or defending rule 12-5 as such, but I’m pointing out the inconsistency in an argument that is dogmatic in its defence of the portability rule but silent on the potentially more insidious twin rule that is 12-5. In fact, Senator Cordy has previously argued that 12-5 is an acceptable exception to the portability rule 12-2(3), which is tantamount to saying, if we’re really worried about senators who may be thinking of leaving with their seats, let’s take those seats away before they do.

Even if you take Senator Cordy’s more evolved position that she articulated on Thursday, in which she says she’s open to revisiting rule 12-5, one has to question how she can defend 12-2(3) on the grounds of tradition while challenging 12-5, which is no less steeped in that tradition.

I want to clarify that I’m not against the concept of portability. In fact, I can think of a scenario where portability of committees is justified because it does not violate procedural integrity and fairness among senators. That scenario is where senators are assigned their seats through an all-Senate process, rather than through group negotiations. In that situation, one could make the case that seats belong to individual senators for the duration of the session. But that is not how we assign committee seats currently.

Portability, you see, is an attractive concept. I would say it’s even a seductive concept, but it has to be fit for purpose. Perhaps we can move towards a selection process that is more fit for portability, but that is some ways off. In the meantime, we should design rules that fit the actual circumstances of our practice rather than an idealized version of what that practice could be.

To sum up, much as some would like to make this report about Senate independence and senatorial autonomy, the less glamorous reality is that committee seat assignment is a routine scarcity problem that has to be solved through negotiations. Negotiations only work if the parties subject themselves to the rules of the negotiated agreement and respect both the outcomes and the procedures that led to those outcomes.

If there is a principle at stake in this motion, this report, this debate, it is the principle of procedural fairness. Senators do not have a divine right to a given committee seat. They receive that seat on a particular committee by willingly participating in a group process that resulted in a favourable outcome for them but at the expense of other senators. If they leave that group, the seat should not go with them. That is the intent of the Selection Committee report we have been asked to vote on, and that is why I support it. Thank you.

May I have a question?

Senator Woo, there are senators who wish to ask questions. Will you take questions?

Yes, of course.

Thank you, Senator Woo, for the thoughtful and erudite speech; I have got to remember senatorial libertarianism.

You spoke in praise of the system for assigning committee seats to senators, but this also includes the very important question of selecting chairs and deputy chairs. That’s not an easy task, being a chair or deputy chair. I don’t need to tell anyone. You need to have a rigorous understanding of the parliamentary process and respect for a balanced and respectful approach and order in the committee. Yet we’ve had total rookie senators appointed to important committees with no experience whatsoever in these areas in the parliamentary process.

Senator Woo, would you say that the current selection process and, in particular, the selection of chairs and deputies, is based on merit or is more based on group affiliation and a kind of popularity-contest vote from the groups, regardless of experience or merit, to date?

Thank you, Senator Patterson, for your question. I cannot speak for your group, but I can tell you definitively that, in the ISG, chairs and deputy chairs that are designated to the ISG through the negotiation process are selected through a democratic process by the members of that committee. They know that the important criteria have to do with expertise. They have to do with the ability to chair meetings. They have to do with real-life experience.

I’m very confident that ISG members make wise decisions in choosing their chairs and deputy chairs.

Thank you, Senator Bellemare.

Those of us who are unilingual heard that the interpreter had some difficulty with the translation, but I think I got the question. I will repeat the question as I understand it.

Senator Bellemare is asking whether there’s another way to solve — let’s call it — the procedural fairness problem that I’ve articulated, whereby if a senator leaves a group and there’s excess demand in the group, rather than stopping portability why don’t we get the Senate to use its powers through rule 12-2 to basically reappoint some senator to redress whatever imbalance resulted from the movement of that said senator. I hope, Senator Bellemare, I have accurately summarized your question.

The answer to that question is that you are, in effect, proposing renegotiation. That’s what it boils down to. If you are saying that every time a member from one group leaves that group and takes a seat with another and that the remedy for the imbalance in the group that used to have the senator’s membership is for the Senate to then make a fix, writ large, then we are essentially talking about the Senate as a whole trying to find the solution to filling one or more seats in the absence of a comprehensive solution. Where that will lead, I am sure, is essentially a wholesale renegotiation of Senate seats.

There may be special circumstances where the Senate can agree, for some extenuating circumstances when someone has to vacate a seat, they will unanimously agree to appoint somebody else into that seat. But in the event that it cannot be done, it essentially boils down to the problem I articulated before which is that you will force the Senate as a whole to try and solve a problem that is best solved by groups and within groups.

That’s why, Senator Bellemare, I don’t think rule 12-2 is the solution to the portability problem.

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.

Would you take a question, Senator Woo?

Yes.

Thank you very much. I want to go back to something I referenced in my speech last evening, and thank you very much for your communication when you acknowledged that you had listened to my speech. You then will recall I referenced a Speaker’s ruling on rule 12-5. I won’t go into all of the detail, but there is one very specific statement I’m going to ask you to interpret, based on the position you have taken about group ownership of the individual member’s position. It says that if a senator withdraws from a caucus, rule 12-5 would cease to apply. The senator would retain any then current committee membership, unless removed either through a report of the Committee of Selection or a substantive motion adopted by the Senate.

Thank you for that question, and thank you for accepting our offer of a seat on the Fisheries Committee. I was distressed to hear last night that you had not gotten any committees. It was my understanding all groups, as part of the negotiations, would look after senators who are non-affiliated. As soon as I found out, I gave you some options and I’m glad you’ve accepted one of them.

With respect to your question, I may be mistaken in my interpretation of the rules, but if we were to pass this Selection Committee report, then I think that application would no longer be in effect, because a senator who was named under the auspices of a group would be subject to the non-portability of that seat. Of course, that’s a decision for this chamber to make, and I won’t prejudge our vote on this report.

Senator Woo, your time is just about up. Are you asking for five more minutes? I see there are more senators who would like to ask questions.

Yes, with leave.

Anybody opposed to leave, please say no.

On this theme of clarification and your interpretation, it’s my understanding from our correspondence that when I wrote back and set out a scenario whereby if I accepted your offer, which I did very much appreciate, that it would be under the current rules because we had not yet voted. So could you explain, please, the conditions you set on your offer of membership?

I’m hesitant to share private correspondence, but you are inviting me to, so by all means. I believe what I said to you was that we are pleased for you to have the seat, and it would be subject to whatever decisions the Senate makes as a whole on the portability or non-portability of seats.

To me, that would imply that if this report is passed, then seats would stay with the group, should you choose to leave.

I’m certain I also said in my email to you, and I don’t want to say it would be extraordinary, but we should not expect that we would take seats away willy-nilly. In fact, I have an expectation that, should you choose to do something different, and the question of your seat came up, we would talk to you about it and we would try to find you another seat. But that is only if perhaps by a new member joining the Senate maybe we’ll get somebody with extraordinary fisheries experience, even better than Senator Manning’s, joining our group, and that person really wants to join fisheries. In that circumstance, we may say to you, “Senator McPhedran, can we work something out?”

But this is not about punishment or vengeance. It’s not about some kind of a power trip. It’s about finding solutions. We are all about finding solutions, but we need tools to find solutions, and I believe this Selection Committee report gives us one of those tools.

Honourable senators, I wasn’t going to participate in the debate, but I have to say I got motivated by the intervention of Senator Woo. Of course, colleagues might even be shocked and surprised today that we are actually in agreement in one of those rare situations. Who knows? It might be a trend, Senator Woo.

Colleagues, I want to share a few thoughts on this particular issue. As I said, I usually don’t like engaging on the Senate floor on issues that have to do with structure, operations and rules. That’s not what we’re here to do. We came here to debate the public discourse of the day, talk about motions, inquiries and studies and provide sober second thought on legislation, to have the courage to put forward thoughtful private members’ bills that speak on behalf of groups that don’t have the opportunity to be heard on the other side for a variety of reasons.

I have to say I’m one of those who came here a number of years back. When I came here as a young rookie parliamentarian appointed by Prime Minister Harper, I came to this place and I got an opportunity to sit back and learn from some of the titans of the parliamentary process: senator Pierre Claude-Nolin, God rest his soul; people like senator Hugh Segal; senator Lowell Murray; senator Jim Cowan; senator Serge Joyal; and Senator George Furey, who still is with us and ably serving in the chair as Speaker. Let me tell you, when I got here, there were deep, thoughtful debates about public policy. Yes, we disagreed. There were Conservatives on one side — back then, we were on that side. There was the Liberal opposition on this side. It was a little partisan, but not as partisan as some of the independents profess and talk about the good old battle days. We didn’t spend that much time on navel-gazing; we didn’t spend that much time complaining about the operations and the nuts and bolts.

The Westminster model is designed the way it’s designed — with groups. Usually, they’re political groups around the world. You have the government side, the opposition side and there are a number of independents in a variety of parliaments. When I came here, we had some independent senators as well. We accommodated them out of goodwill.

The reason we have groups in all the Westminster parliaments is to eliminate the bottleneck that is happening right now in this chamber. I have seen this on a number of occasions since 2016. One has to ask the question: What are we spending all these hours trying to solve? Because I can tell you in 2015, that terrible bad old way of doing things in the Senate, very partisan, made up the Liberals and the Conservatives, when the government at the time forced upon this institution a structural change through political discourse, through an election, what has created this less partisan Senate was an election campaign, the Prime Minister going to the electorate saying: “I want to create a less partisan Senate, and I want to make it more independent.”

We respected the democratic will at the time because that’s how the tradition of this place was. Those who were the first arrivals appointed by Prime Minister Trudeau will remember both the Liberal and Conservative caucuses went out of their way to accommodate, to find committee spaces for those senators, and to change the rules to the best of our ability to accommodate them to create new groups. And that was just done out of goodwill, nothing more and nothing less.

Unfortunately, you all know my opinion on this, these changes have been imposed on us by Prime Minister Trudeau without strategic thought or a path forward, but we have tried to find that path forward to the best of our ability. And I will tell you that this is still a place of Parliament, and I remind everybody of that. It’s a place of democracy. We have had an issue for 154 years and ongoing. We don’t get elected every four years. We are not accountable to the electorate every four or five years. We have such a privilege of tenure. Independence of tenure is more important than professed independence, saying, “I’m not affiliated. I’m not a member of a party.” You’re here until the age of 75. That’s the most amazing privilege anybody could have. And this institution, before this new independent Senate, had an ongoing problem of accountability and transparency with the public. Just because you say you are independent today, all of a sudden, has not resolved that problem. We still have the issue that we’re not always compatible with democratic outcomes.

In the last two elections, the Conservative Party of Canada received the plurality of votes from the Canadian public.

Not only do you not hear much about that, we have a group in the official opposition in this chamber that, from a proportional perspective, continues to go down. As is the tradition of the place, the prime minister has the prerogative of naming senators and it continues to grow. Historically, senators have always been appointed to be either Liberals or Conservatives. Liberal prime ministers traditionally appoint liberal-minded senators. If not Liberal, they are independent, but certainly progressive; certainly centre-left. One would expect nothing less. Conservative prime ministers usually appoint conservative-minded senators, usually a bit right of centre, and that’s fine as well.

You know when you come here, more or less, those are the values of who you are, what you are all about and what you normally articulate. It’s very rare — although there are exceptions where prime ministers name senators who come here and have a diametrically opposed position. Again, because of your privilege of tenure, you have that right.

Now what we have is a situation where groups — and I’m going into a long precursor — in this place represent senators. We do the negotiations — nuts and bolts of committee representation — in order for this place to be functional. Regardless of whether we are political or not political, without groups working and cooperating — and over the last couple of weeks I have been filling Senator Plett’s big shoes as acting leader and it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work talking with all the other leadership groups in a spirit of fairness, trying not to guide or decide debate. We have disagreements all the time with Senator Gold, Senator Woo, Senator Cordy and Senator Tannas, but our intention is to make the place function so we can have coherent debate. Everyone can have an opportunity to articulate, make their points, persuade people and move the agenda along. So far, we are not doing a bad job, in my opinion, in this Parliament.

However, we are not doing a great job when we are spending hours on this kind of stuff. I listened to Senator Mercer and Senator Cordy carefully. Talk about an infringement of parliamentary privilege in this place. Let’s take two examples: the committees on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration, and Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament. These are not even committees that deal with public policy. These are committees that deal with our function. Take a committee like the Senate Ethics Committee, which touches each and every one of us, potentially, if ever an ethics question comes up. Those are three specific examples.

When a group appoints their representative to any one of these committees, those individuals not only represent their own personal experience, knowledge and skill set; they represent their colleagues. Can you imagine if tomorrow morning in the Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration Committee that the chair, Senator Marwah, and the deputy chairs, Senator Campbell — who represents the Canadian Senators Group — and the other deputy chair, Senator Dawson, decide they are suddenly becoming Conservatives? Highly unlikely, I know, but maybe Senator Dawson falls and hits his head. Maybe Senator Campbell, when he gets a little older, has a major shift in values from left of centre to the right of centre. All I’m saying is that once this place becomes the wild west, those individuals — and it’s not a question of their privilege being infringed or having a right to transfer representation on these important committees — are going to be infringing upon the rights of each and every colleague of the group that appointed them in that important committee.

The reason we have group meetings every week is because we can’t attend every single standing committee in this place. I expect, at least on the steering committee, a couple of representatives who will represent the values and views I have, and bring me any red flags I should know about on a weekly basis. If I want to further exercise my privilege, I can go to any standing Senate committee, as Senator Woo pointed out, and articulate my point of view as Senator Housakos. I can go to each and every one of the committees, even though I officially serve on three of them. That’s where your privilege kicks in.

However, the moment you are representing a group on the Ethics Committee, the Internal Economy Committee or the Rules Committee, and all of a sudden we allow for the potential of majority mob rule, this place falls apart. The goodwill I talked about earlier that I experienced in the past falls apart. All of a sudden, it’s a question of who can influence more members to join the Progressive Senate Group or the CSG or the ISG and the spirit of independence. For what? We are here to defend values and policies. We are not here to fight for territory or ground. That’s not what we are here for.

I think we have to be cognizant of that and to my earlier point about accountability. You have to be accountable to somebody. The members of the Conservative caucus and I, politically in our democracy — we can have a long debate about this, but if you ask the media, if any one of us does here something they will be knocking on Erin O’Toole’s door — the Leader of the Opposition — and saying that a member of his caucus is infringing on this, that and the other. We’ve had experiences recently, and that’s our accountability.

Honourable senators, there is a problem we have, even with this new model, and I haven’t worked my way around it. All of you who have been appointed by Prime Minister Trudeau in the spirit of independence have to be accountable to somebody. At a bare minimum, be accountable to the group you independently chose to sit with when you came here on the basis of values. Nobody forced you to join the Independent Senators Group, the CSG or the Progressive Senate Group. Nobody forced you to join the Conservatives; not one has since Mr. Trudeau has gone to this independent body.

The odds are what they are. That’s not the debate here. The point is that some people here change groups like I change ties. How in the world can you change your values overnight? What is the driving force behind it? Let’s call a spade a spade and be honest. It’s the typical interaction of groups as they get larger between egos and human beings, in pursuit of titles and premiums. We know what this debate is all about. It has nothing to do with values or political discourse. It has nothing to do with the interests of the Canadian people we are here to serve. It’s all self-serving. We have to look into the mirror and ask ourselves if this is the kind of Senate we want to build.

I remind you that we are not elected. We were given a mandate by a Prime Minister. Some of us were vetted by different committees, but each and every one of us was given a mandate by a Prime Minister. That’s your democratic mandate that you have here. After that, we are cognizant as senators, historically, that we have to make this unelected place work out of respect, cooperation, tolerance and give-and-take. I have always said, even at the worst and most partisan times of this institution — and I go back to the Rules Committee, the Internal Economy Committee and the Senate Ethics Committee — there was always a consensus. On this kind of stuff, on the nuts and bolts about rules, committees, budgets and titles, there was a consensus.

Then we went back to our caucuses and figured it out amongst ourselves. Not everybody was always happy with the outcome, but that is human nature. Since 2016, I have never seen the amount of navel-gazing that we are engaging in right now. I think it is wrong. We have to respect the groups. We just unanimously passed Bill S-2, and we sent it to the House. Why did we do that? We are asking taxpayers to foot the bill to pay more money for leadership of Senate groups in this place. This is something that we Conservatives were hesitant about, as you all know, but we have come to terms that there is change and we have to have consensus and make this place work. Why did we give such value to the different leadership groups here? Because we respect the choices of senators to work within those groups.

All I’m saying, honourable senators, is let’s stop the gamesmanship, let’s stop trying to poach one another and let’s focus on public discourse, policy, bills, motions, inquiries and on trying to make Canada a better place for Canadians. Thank you.