Senator MacDonald, I believe you spoke on this item already. You’re not permitted to enter debate a second time.

You could ask a question of Senator Tannas.

I think that’s safe to say, and I wouldn’t want them to be.

As I said in my speech, when cabinet ministers vote on private members’ bills — at least in my experience from a time when I had access to cabinet ministers and listened to why they did certain things — it’s because they had a reasoned position most of the time.

I couldn’t find how Minister Freeland voted so she must have been away, and Minister Joly was paired and had gone somewhere.

But here are the Minister of International Trade, the Minister of Agriculture and the Prime Minister himself. All of those folks would have access to an enormous amount of advice; people within their departments would be giving them advice. That was extremely enlightening for me, to think that those would be the folks getting that advice. They will be the ones charged with implementing it, and they voted for the bill as it was.

As we know, the government leader has made his position clear that the government still wants that bill, notwithstanding the advice that we in the Senate may or may not give them by radically changing the bill.

Senator Tannas, would you take a question?

Sure.

You referenced seeing some of the documents that the committee had received with regard to support and discussion on reciprocity and the support within Canada for Bill C-280.

The organization that represents the potato growers in Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and all the other provinces in Canada would be the Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada. I believe they gave testimony. Is it your understanding that they are in support of this bill and actually used language saying they have been asking for it for 40 years?

I did not see anything from the potato growers, but there was something from an official in the Food and Drug Administration in the United States. That was the one that I saw some reference to, so I can’t answer your question.

Senator Tannas, could you accept another question? With joy?

With joy.

I’m just observing the last few speeches that we heard from colleagues prior to you on the bill. It seemed that their arguments were not in favour of the amendments as much as being against the underlying principle of the bill.

Would you agree that, if you’re against the bill itself, just the fundamental idea of it, you should not be trying to defeat it through a report and amendments? You should just vote against the bill at third reading. Is that a fair observation?

Yes, I favour transparency. I favour speaking clearly and saying, “I’m not in favour of it.” I think we do sometimes see that it is established in Parliament that there are other ways to do this without going straight at it. I don’t favour that.

There are hoist amendments and there are all kinds of tactics similar to this that have been employed in other bills. I’d rather look past it and decide on my own if I support the bill or not unless there is an amendment that is genuinely helpful. But we know that this is not helpful to that element of this bill that provides for reciprocity on exports and imports.

On the issue of reciprocity, as a person who has built businesses, I’m not a banker, so I don’t have experience with what the bankers look at the risk profile. But for the risk profile of an entrepreneur, I’m always looking at my certainty of payment when I’m making a sale. Access to markets and certainty of payment are crucial to building my business.

One of the ways that the Netherlands has been so successful in becoming 72 times as productive per acre of arable land as Canadians is by having access to the European market and growing their agricultural business to far greater than just what feeds the Dutch.

When I look at it, I look at access to markets and certainty of payment as being crucial to growing our agricultural productivity in Canada. Would you have an observation in that regard?

I wasn’t planning on speaking on this. What bothered me was who voted for this bill on the other side that ought to have known that this was something the government wanted and was likely to fill the bill of the reciprocity requirements. The agriculture minister on whether this is a good bill that will help his industry and the international trade minister on whether this fills the bill for reciprocity — I place a lot of faith on the fact that they have done their homework with their officials and the resources of those two massive departments. They know what they’re doing. Together with the fact that I know enough about banking to be dangerous — although I am one of the few, if not only, living founders of a Canadian chartered bank, but the management team got me out of the way very quickly and told me not to come back and they would come and see me.

The fact is that we went through this process of protecting workers, particularly around pensions because that’s their money. In this case, we’re talking about farm workers. To say that somehow farm workers who have handed their goods over that they worked for are not entitled and thereby are not just not entitled but are going to turn their assets over to the workers in that business, that doesn’t compute for me.

I like the deemed trust idea — the idea that it is the obligation of all those at those businesses taking in fresh fruits and vegetables to hold that money in trust and they should be made to do that, and if they don’t, it will be deemed at the end. All of those creditor parties, including the sophisticated bankers, have methods by which they can insist that people are protected.

Senator Ringuette talked about the bonds. A bonding program — I’m in that business as well in insurance, and I’m thinking, “Wow, it’s an interesting way to deal with the risk through a surety bond.” If I were a banker dealing with a restaurant or a food retailer that has very large receivables on fresh fruit and vegetables, I would be finding a way to make sure it was either held in trust or there was a surety to deal with it or I would be reducing my lending against inventory sufficiently so that by restricting the credit I have actually mitigated that risk.

As I was listening to this, it wasn’t feeling good. I was going to ask a question, and instead, because of time, I wound up debating this for much longer than I had hoped.

Senator Plett, do you have a question?

I’m hoping Senator Tannas will be prepared to debate it for at least two minutes longer.

Senator Tannas, thank you for your comments. It gave us an opportunity to ask a few questions that we couldn’t ask before. I have two questions, and I’ll ask one and then I’ll ask for your answer, and then I’ll ask the second one. I did ask Senator Loffreda this question and he didn’t give me the answer, so I’ll ask you for your opinion on this.

Senator Loffreda, Senator Varone and others have made a lot of hay out of the fact that they say that we did not receive any assurances. I think if I paraphrase Senator Loffreda, “We received no reassurances that we will receive reciprocity because of Bill C-280.” Yet, we did, as I said to Senator Loffreda, receive assurances — absolutely clear — that we will not receive reciprocity of this amendment if adopted. That we know for sure.

In light of that, Senator Tannas — I don’t even know enough about banking to be dangerous. You’re well above me there. With your experience in business and banking, do you not think we should take very seriously that threat, if you will, that promise that we will not receive reciprocity if this amendment is adopted? Should that not give us real pause to consider whether we should be adopting this amendment?

Yes, I think so. I wasn’t going to venture this opinion, but I will. When I look at the changes, it limits the parties that apply to this deemed trust, the beneficiaries. Whereas in the United States, it’s like a mutual that keeps going where every party is protected along the way except for the end-user, which is where the risk for everybody really likely is; it is at the end-user. But if a big end-user defaults, those suppliers, if they are the middle men for farmers, they are covered so there is a process to recover it all the way back down the line so that everyone is whole except for the end-user and the creditors of the end-user who are the only ones in the whole process that can really control the outcome.

That is an interesting way to go. The only way I think we can replicate that — it seemed to me to be logical — sufficient to have reciprocity would be to have something sort of similar. If we’re not going to do that, it made sense to me that the Food and Drug Administration official would say, “No, this doesn’t work.” It’s not a close enough match.

Just one more question if I could, please. You’ve said a few times, both in your speech and in answer to some of the questions, that you take a fair bit of solace — if you will — in the fact that, in the other place, the international trade minister, I think you said, the agricultural minister and the Prime Minister voted in favour of this. Three hundred and twenty members of the House of Commons voted in favour, and only one voted against. We just an hour or two ago passed an amendment that 278 members in the other place voted specifically against.

Even though Senator Loffreda said this amendment had not been presented on Bill C-280, in fact, it was. They decided it wouldn’t work, so they dropped it, those 278, when it actually was brought forward. Again, the agricultural minister, the trade minister and the Prime Minister all voted in favour.

Senator Tannas, you have been quite a proponent of a reformed Senate, more so maybe than I have, but I think you believe firmly in this institution. If we thumb our nose at the House of Commons when they vote 320 to 1 or even 278 to 33 — they are accountable every election to the people of Canada, to the electorate — what do you think this does to the reputation of the Senate if we simply say, “I’m sorry; we don’t really care what you decided. We know better because we’re bankers,” or this or that? “We will not pay any attention to what you are doing,” or “We are not going to give a chance to have a back and forth. We are just going to immediately change what you have already voted on over there.” Tell me what, in your opinion, this does to the reputation of the Senate.

I do not know that you will like my answer, Senator Plett, but I do not think that it will, one way or the other, impact the reputation of the Senate. I think we all have to come to our own conclusions, having listened to the debate and done our own independent research. We are free to do what we should do.

At the end of the day, the House of Commons does have final say. I believe that we all believe that when we send an amendment over, if they send it back and say, “No, thanks,” we’re not going to send it over again, except in the most extreme circumstances. I know it has happened before. I do not know that it has happened since I have been here. Maybe once, that’s right; the former government leader would remember.

We all need to figure out what feels right for us to do in this case. It is a private member’s bill. I take some comfort in the fact that the guys who are supposed to be looking after this for the country — Agriculture, International Trade and the Prime Minister — felt strongly enough about it to vote for it. That’s what I am hanging my hat on; others may not.

I think we do what we believe is best. We will all get to the right place eventually because the House does have the ability, if we send something over, to send it back.

Thank you.

Senator Tannas, would you entertain one more question?

Sure.

Thank you. I had the opportunity to travel to Washington, D.C., in April with Team Canada. We had John Barlow, Kody Blois and a number of members of Parliament from all sides. It was a great trip. We met with the USDA, and they explained to us that if Bill C-280 passed in its original form, they would be offering us reciprocity, and it would be at the administrative level, so it would be quick and easy. We took comfort from that.

Considering we used to have PACA protection for our growers and that it was eliminated in 2014, such that our growers now need to pay a bond for protection under PACA, would you not agree that passing this bill unamended would place us back in an advantageous position with the United States as a trading partner?

Yes, I think so. As has been mentioned, this is very much a two-way street. Certainly, the export imbalance is obvious. It has been talked about here. The in-country balances are significant as well.

I think it supports our local agriculture, and it also is part of what we ought to be doing for our American trading partners. I’m sure we look to them for other kinds of security and stability in other areas where we have the positive imbalance.

We have seen trade situations of exacerbation in our trade relationship with the U.S., in particular in my province. We obviously produce the best potatoes in the world. We had a situation where we had a quarantinable disease and phytosanitary issues that resulted in the U.S. shutting us out of their markets. So we very much felt what it was like to not have access to those markets.

Considering we are in a tumultuous time politically, do you think it would be wise for us to pass Bill C-280? Our U.S. counterparts want this, as well as our producers. We have heard overwhelmingly from all of the commodity groups that represent the producers of perishable goods in Canada that they want this too.

Do you feel that this would be a wise move on the part of Canada to ensure that we strengthen the relationship that might be approaching a fragile time?

Yes. I have done my research. I’m going to support the bill in its unamended form because I think, for all of the reasons you have enumerated and more, that that’s the right approach for me. That is how I will be voting. Thank you.

Are senators ready for the question?

Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?

All those in favour of the motion will please say “yea.”

Some Hon. Senators: Yea.

The Hon. the Speaker: All those opposed to the motion will please say “nay.”

Some Hon. Senators: Nay.

The Hon. the Speaker: In my opinion the “nays” have it.

I see two senators rising. Is there an agreement on the length of the bell?

One hour. The vote will take place at 9:37 p.m. Call in the senators.

Honourable senators, when shall this bill be read the third time?

(On motion of Senator MacDonald, bill placed on the Orders of the Day for third reading at the next sitting of the Senate.)