Honourable senators, I absolutely love the responsibility of this role. In the context of my career, I cannot imagine ever having a greater honour than serving as an independent senator in this chamber.

However, there are days when I do not love every aspect of this job and the countless rules and constraints. It’s a challenge that we share with Canada’s entrepreneurs — red tape that can prevent us from achieving our full potential.

When I’m struggling with our 150 years of rules, I often hear a clerk gently reminding me that it’s senators who make those rules. It’s in this light that Senator Lewis and I were asked by our Canadian Senators Group colleagues to survey all senators in order to capture the diversity of views relating to our sitting schedule; the use of hybrid mode in sittings and committee meetings; whether we would consider a voting practice beyond that used in 1867; and what goals might guide the modernization of these and other practices, potentially in ways similar to the House of Commons.

We gladly accepted the challenge.

Consequently, we’ll be creating and sharing a survey of senators that we hope you’ll thoughtfully complete. Its primary objective is not to advocate for a particular outcome, but rather to gauge levels of support or concern regarding possible changes to the operation of the Senate.

And, clearly, for any changes to even be considered, we must ensure that all Senate and committee business would be adequately supported and staffed in a sustainable manner.

We will survey all senators because the financial and personal cost of weekly travel is not equally distributed across this chamber. Some of us live here in Ottawa. Others travel weekly from the interior of B.C. or an outport in Newfoundland, from above the Arctic Circle or from Canada’s deep south, Windsor, Ontario.

There is a wide range of possible opportunities and limitations for us to consider. With each, we need to identify guardrails that will help to ensure each potential change could be implemented effectively, cost-efficiently and in ways that strengthen our ability to serve Canadians.

As we all know, the House of Commons continued to hold hybrid meetings post-pandemic. We did not. We may find that our collective position on this issue has changed simply because out of 99 current senators, 48 — or almost half — have been appointed since COVID.

Let’s consider our diversity of viewpoints and see if there’s an approach that might better serve our diversity of needs.

Thank you, colleagues.