Honourable senators, the Senate entered a new era this week, that is, the era of televised debates. For those who may not know, bringing cameras into this place is the culmination of efforts that began over five years ago. If I may, I’d like to briefly outline how this came to pass.

In November 2013, the Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration, chaired by Senator Comeau, decided to broadcast the Senate debates on its website. Because of that decision, that committee, under the leadership of Senator Housakos, now meets publicly.

In 2014, an advisory working group, at the time made up of Senator Douglas Black, Senator Mitchell and Senator Munson and chaired by Senator Greene, was already working on parameters for broadcasting the debates. In March 2015, a company called Blueprint that had been commissioned a few months earlier released its report to the Advisory Working Group on Communications. It recommended further exploring the possibility of televising our debates.

In December 2015, the Senate adopted two motions moved jointly by Senator Cowan, the leader of the Senate Liberals, and me, the leader of the Conservative Party. One motion proposed holding a question period with ministers and the other created the Special Committee on Senate Modernization, which was chaired by Senator McInnis. In October 2016, that committee tabled two reports that recommended moving forward with televised debates once the Senate chamber moved to the Conference Centre.

In December 2016, the Rules of the Senate were amended accordingly.

This decision stems directly from the modernization efforts that were undertaken when we, the Conservatives, gained the majority in the Senate in 2010. We had three key themes: efficiency, accountability and transparency. Because the Senate always has to be frugal and as efficient as possible, we adopted the zero-based budgeting method for preparing our budgets and saved Canadian taxpayers several million dollars between 2010 and 2015.

It is in that spirit of frugality that Senator Tkachuk, the then chair of the Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration, insisted that the Senate move here to the Conference Centre during the renovation of Centre Block. That decision is to be commended as it saved the public purse several hundreds of millions of dollars.

It is because senators have to be accountable for their actions that major changes were made to expense management, that the Auditor General was called to investigate, and that senators went through a disciplinary process on management in general. It is also because senators became accountable that, in 2014, the Senate adopted a very strict code of ethics.

It is out of concern for transparency that senators’ expenses have been publicly disclosed since 2010 and that our way of communicating with the public has completely changed since December 2013.

We welcome the new live broadcasting. We also applaud the leadership of the two groups represented at this time: the Liberal Party of Canada and the Conservative Party of Canada.