I rise on a point of order, if I may, Your Honour.

Yes, Senator Plett.

Thank you, Your Honour, and I know that we will have about two minutes before you will interrupt. That is the luck of the draw.

Honourable senators, I rise on a point of order regarding the actions of one of our senators — Senator Cardozo — that transpired at a recent meeting of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

This committee was tasked — by a unanimous vote of the House of Commons — to study the House Speaker’s public participation at an Ontario Liberal Party convention. Let me read part of the order of reference:

That the Speaker’s public participation at an Ontario Liberal Party convention, as Speaker of the House of Commons, constitute a breach of the tradition and expectation of impartiality required for that high office, constituting a serious error of judgment which undermines the trust required to discharge his duties and responsibilities and, therefore, the House refer the matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs with instruction that it recommend an appropriate remedy . . . .

On Monday, December 11, the committee met, and one of the witnesses was the Speaker of the House of Commons, Mr. Greg Fergus. The Member of Parliament for Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, Quebec, Ms. Sherry Romanado, told Mr. Fergus the following:

Mr. Speaker, you’re probably not aware, but late last night, many members of PROC received letters supporting you in your role as speaker. . . .

And then she said:

I wanted to personally convey to you that you have people supporting you that have written to all of us to say that you are new. . . .

Then, she finished by saying:

I want to thank you and let you know that there is support out there for the role model you are playing for young Black Canadians, and I wanted to thank you for that.

One of the letters in question was sent under the name of Carl Nicholson. There was no signature on that letter. It was simply a name. There was no specific address, but simply the mention of “Ottawa.”

At Monday’s meeting of the committee, it was noted that this letter was actually written by Senator Andrew Cardozo. The properties of the Microsoft Word document clearly indicate this.

The fact that the letter was written by Senator Cardozo was raised around 10:30 a.m. on Monday. The Senate met later that day for two hours and then met on Tuesday, from 2 p.m. until 11:41 p.m., and yesterday, from 2 p.m. to 11:31 p.m. At no time did Senator Cardozo stand on the Senate floor to explain his role regarding this letter, and, to my knowledge, he has made no public statement on this matter. This affair raises three issues where senators could use your guidance, Your Honour. The first pertains to meddling in the internal affairs of the House of Commons.

Sorry to interrupt, Senator Plett. Honourable Senators, it is now six o’clock, and pursuant to rule 3-3(1), I’m 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?

This affair raises three issues, where senators — again, as I said — could use your guidance, Your Honour.

The first pertains to meddling in the internal affairs of the House of Commons. Of course, senators are free to express their opinions — it’s actually their job to do so. There’s nothing preventing a senator from writing to members of the House of Commons to raise issues of public affairs or to raise the concerns of a citizen or group of citizens. However, I find it strange that a senator would want to get involved in a purely internal matter of the House of Commons.

The future of Greg Fergus as Speaker of the House of Commons is a matter that will be settled by the elected members of Parliament, and no one else. I think Senator Cardozo’s attempts to meddle in the affairs of the other place were misguided, to say the least. It shows a lack of understanding of how each house of Parliament manages its affairs totally independently of the other house. I’m pretty sure Senator Cardozo would be the first to jump up if Pierre Poilievre sent a letter to members of the Senate Ethics Committee asking them to go easy on a Conservative senator. I know Senator Cardozo says he is not a Liberal senator; however, I don’t think he is fooling anyone.

But a Liberal or not —

We don’t have a point of order on a point of order.

He’s out of order.

I’m sorry. I lost my place here, so I will start over at the beginning.

I think Senator Cardozo’s attempts to meddle in the affairs of the other place were misguided, to say the least. It shows a lack of understanding of how each house of Parliament manages its affairs. I am pretty sure Senator Cardozo would be the first to jump in if Pierre Poilievre were to send a message to the Senate Ethics Committee asking them to go easy on a Conservative senator. I know Senator Cardozo says he’s not a Liberal; however, I don’t think he’s fooling anyone. However, Liberal or not, he’s a senator. So, we have here a senator trying to influence MPs in an investigation of a member of Parliament for a breach of this member’s duties. We have a senator who has inserted himself into a matter that is the purview of MPs and that will be decided by MPs — and only MPs.

Your Honour, I think senators would benefit from your views on where to draw the line between expressing an opinion on a public matter and getting involved in the internal affairs of the other place. I suggest that Senator Cardozo did indeed cross that line, and I think you will confirm this. If, on the other hand, you think that Senator Cardozo did not cross such a line, we would all benefit to know where such a line is, if it exists.

Second, as I mentioned earlier, Senator Cardozo did not sign the letter he wrote. The letter was sent under the name of a certain Carl Nicholson. This means the MPs could not know that the letter was coming from Senator Cardozo. I don’t know why the senator chose to use the name of a third party. Maybe he knew that a senator meddling in the affairs of the House of Commons is against the rules, as I already argued. But regardless of why the senator decided not to sign the letter himself, I submit that this is not the conduct that is expected from an honourable senator. For a senator to send letters anonymously or under an alias is a grave breach of their duties and is unbecoming of a senator. Did Mr. Nicholson dictate the letter to Senator Cardozo while he was typing? We would have to accept that Senator Cardozo is then moonlighting on the weekends as an administrative assistant. Did Senator Cardozo use Mr. Nicholson in his campaign to save the career of his Liberal friend Greg Fergus? We do not know.

This issue was made public on Monday, and Senator Cardozo has still not come clear on this. Maybe he has an explanation for why he did not sign his own name. Maybe my raising of this issue will encourage him to come clean. But right now, Your Honour, all we know is that Senator Cardozo did not sign the letter that he wrote. His motives for not being transparent with the MPs to whom he was writing are nebulous, and we don’t know if Senate resources were used in preparing and sending this letter.

I think we need you, Your Honour, to tell us if it’s okay for senators to send anonymous letters and other messages, and whether it’s okay to use a third party to sign those documents. More specifically, we need to know whether the fact that Senate resources were used to draft and send those letters serve as a preponderant factor in determining if a senator had a breach in the performance of their duties. I know that members of Parliament that received this letter last Sunday are not impressed by the fact that a senator would send anonymous letter. This reflects badly on the Senate.

Third, as I said, the letter prepared by Senator Cardozo was sent to members of the Procedure and House Affairs Committee on the eve of Mr. Fergus’s appearance in front of the committee investigating his public participation at an Ontario Liberal Party convention as Speaker of the House of Commons. As I said, the letter was sent under the name of Mr. Carl Nicholson. This letter also makes the following claim: “Carl Nicholson is an active member of the Black Canadian community.”

The letter points out that the election of Mr. Fergus was great news for the Black community, which, of course, I will not dispute. It then defends the actions of Mr. Fergus, asking the members of the committee to forgive him, because to call for his resignation could send the wrong message. I will not dispute those arguments at this time. That is not my intent today. But where I do take issue is the fact that the letter was sent by a senator who is not Black.

Again, Your Honour, in the absence of an explanation from Senator Cardozo, three days after this was revealed at committee, I must ask you to rule on the question of the use of false pretenses by a senator when writing to third parties — specifically to MPs.

It’s interesting to note that the letter, after the name of Mr. Nicholson as the author, includes the biography of Mr. Nicholson written in the third person. Common practice would be to say somewhere in the letter, “I am so-and-so and I do this and hold this position.” Who writes their biography in the third person in a letter? The only logical explanation is that it is not Mr. Nicholson who is actually speaking in the letter.

In conclusion, Your Honour, the questions raised today could have easily been answered by Senator Cardozo. As I said, more than three days have passed since the issue of the anonymous letter was raised at the Procedure and House Affairs Committee. He could certainly tell us why he thought it was a good idea to get involved in the investigation by a House of Commons committee of the actions of a member. He could tell us why he thought it was a good idea to not act with openness and transparency and sign his own name. He could tell us why he was impersonating another person. If he does not, Your Honour, I would invite you to intervene.

Senator Cardozo, would you like to respond?

Honourable senators, I don’t really understand what is happening. Senator Plett rose on a point of order about an anonymous message that was tabled concerning the House of Commons. I don’t know how far you can go with a point of order under the Rules of the Senate, but I always thought that points of order had to pertain to Senate business and matters being examined by the Senate.

Both Senator Plett and I think that it is unfortunate that the House of Commons occasionally tries to interfere in our business and tell us what to do, but, obviously, I am just as resistant to the idea of telling the House of Commons committee that is examining the conduct of the Speaker of the other place what to do.

I have in front of me a tweet from MP Eric Duncan.

Liberals wanted everyone watching to know that members of our committee received “anonymous letters” supporting Greg Fergus as Speaker.

I’d sure like to know how Senator Plett can attribute anonymous letters to members of the Senate. I don’t know to what extent you’d have to go digging through Senator Plett’s emails in his office to see if he wrote letters to Mr. Poilievre to tell him what to do about the House of Commons or the Senate. There must be a limit to decency. Anonymous letters do not deserve our consideration. Ours is too important an institution to start investigating anonymous letters.

In my opinion, honourable senators, this point of order is not valid. None of this has anything to do with the Senate. If the senator wants to file a complaint with the Ethics Officer about a senator’s behaviour, that’s one thing, but he wants to raise a point of order even though this issue has nothing to do with the Senate.

Thank you.

Honourable senators, if this chamber feels that it’s their duty to rise on a question of privilege on a tweet that a senator “liked” in regard to public discourse, certainly the allegations about a senator’s comportment about sending an email to a parliamentary committee that is doing an evaluation and a study on the ethical behaviour or lack thereof or the independence of a Speaker of that chamber, of course, merit some degree of scrutiny, particularly the allegation about a comportment of a senator who sent a letter in the course of that investigation and did not have the liberty of taking and assuming responsibility for that particular letter.

I think we will agree that it’s a grave error on the part of any senator to misappropriate who they are in front of any parliamentary committee, and to try to do it in a secretive fashion and try to influence that committee, and to not assume responsibility for that. And in answer to Senator Dalphond, we think it’s our purview to judge the comportment of senators when they’re walking on Wellington Street, but we don’t think it’s within our purview to judge and evaluate if a senator has used Senate resources in their position as a senator to send — to try to influence an independent House committee on the other side in an evaluation of ethical behaviour or lack thereof of their Speaker?

Like I said, I will reserve judgment, because Senator Cardozo, like all honourable colleagues, deserves a chance to respond to these serious allegations, but I also believe that since this chamber has been so preoccupied with the ethical behaviour of each and every one of us because we feel it reflects on the institution, I think we merit to have at least an explanation from Senator Cardozo.

Are you rising on a point of order or a question of privilege? I understood Senator Plett to say that he was making a point of order.

I responded on the point of order, and I responded on your intervention on the point of order, pointing out that if certain frivolous things require study in this place in terms of a question of privilege, certainly serious allegations require, at bare minimum, a point of order in this particular case. So that’s the point I was trying to make, Senator Dalphond.

Are there any other senators who would like to enter debate on the point of order?

I will give Senator Cardozo until tomorrow after Government Business to respond to the point of order, and then we can deal with that tomorrow. Thank you.

Honourable senators, with leave of the Senate, I move:

That the Senate do now adjourn.

The Hon. the Speaker: Is leave granted, honourable senators?

Hon. Senators: Agreed.