Honourable senators, hello, tansi.

As a senator for Manitoba, I recognize that I live on Treaty 1 territory, the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples and the homeland of the Métis Nation. I acknowledge that the Parliament of Canada is situated on unceded and unsurrendered Algonquin Anishinaabe territory.

Colleagues, I rise to speak to Bill C-47, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023. I wish to emphasize some issues that were touched upon by previous senators. I thank Senator Loffreda for his sponsorship of this bill, and in particular for his very measured speech, in which he openly and fairly acknowledged many of the concerns and frustrations voiced by senators regarding the strictures under which this bill was studied — namely time constraints and concerns over the omnibus nature of the legislation. I also thank him for highlighting many of the observations reported by numerous committees, all of which will — should the government choose to heed them — improve the implementation of this bill.

Further, I wish to explain today what I was not allowed to explain at our second reading vote — why I abstained. In short, I am very concerned in the short- and long-term over the framing of this legislation. I find the tactic of omnibus legislation deeply troubling because it is one indicator of the erosion of the principles of democratic transparency and accountability. Abstaining was one small way to make my concerns known.

I know I am not alone in this concern, as our previous debate definitely showed us earlier today. There are so many ways for us to make known our opposition to this practice generally, but in truth, they are few in number in terms of effectiveness.

To me, this is the most abusive variant of omnibus legislation — an omni-budget bill. However, these bills present a special challenge because they are money bills and de facto votes of confidence. There is much I support in this budget; there are also, however, other sections about which I am concerned and would have chosen to speak and vote against had the provisions been presented as stand-alone legislation.

Objections to omnibus legislation are many, but to identify a few key critiques that I believe many of us share, they would include, one, a calculated complexity and confusion that hinders transparency. Omnibus bills are increasingly extensive and complex by design, making it difficult for legislators and the public to fully understand and analyze all the provisions they contain. This lack of transparency certainly weakens our democratic process as it limits meaningful debate, reduces scrutiny and restricts public participation. As Senator Marshall alluded to in her comments, the imposition of artificially imposed timelines detracted from meaningful committee study of the bill’s numerous provisions.

A second critique is that of bypassing the regular legislative process, resulting in inadequate debate and scrutiny. Fast-tracked through the legislative process, these bills allow for only limited debate and study. By bundling various and all-too-often unrelated provisions together, the aim is to expedite the passage of controversial or less popular measures by leveraging the inclusion of essential ones. This bypassing of the regular legislative process undermines the principles of checks and balances. Professor Ned Franks characterizes this as a deliberate way to “. . . subvert and evade the normal principles of parliamentary review of legislation.”

The third is diminished accountability. When diverse unrelated provisions are combined into a single bill, which sadly has become the norm for budget bills, it becomes challenging for legislators to be held accountable. Kevin Wiener, a Toronto‑based human rights and refugee lawyer, summarized this deliberate evasion of democratic accountability as follows: “One way to look at it is that the government is saying, with great power should come no responsibility.”

Law professor Adam Dodek, examining the fractious history of omnibus legislation in Canada, cites a significant ruling made in 1971 by speaker Lucien Lamoureux, who, when questioned on the validity of omnibus bills, was constrained to rule that “the government has followed the practice that has been accepted in the past, rightly or wrongly.”

Speaker Lamoureux then added this poignant caution:

. . . we may have reached the point where we are going too far and that omnibus bills seek to take in too much.

[W]here do we stop? Where is the point of no return? . . . [W]e might reach the point where we would have only one bill, a bill at the start of the session for the improvement of the quality of life in Canada which would include every single proposed piece of legislation for the session. . . . But would it be acceptable legislation? There must be a point where we go beyond what is acceptable from a strictly parliamentary standpoint.

Given the increasing propensity of successive governments to employ omnibus tactics, we may never see another bell-ringing incident like was experienced in 1982, when opposition to a government omnibus bill led to 15 straight days of division bells. That crisis resulted in the bill being divided and the appointment of a committee to consider reform of the procedures of the house. Ironically, the issue of omnibus bills — the very issue that sparked the study — was never addressed in the report recommendations. There seems to be no appetite to stop these bills anymore, certainly not when we clearly see a revolving door attitude between parties of simply decrying such undemocratic procedures when not in power, but embracing them when voted in.

Parliamentarians have periodically risen in the other place to decry omnibus strong-arming tactics. Let me quote one:

Speaker, I would argue that the subject matter of the bill is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles.

. . . in the interest of democracy I ask: How can members represent their constituents on these various areas when they are forced to vote in a block on such legislation and on such concerns?

We can agree with some of the measures but oppose others. How do we express our views and the views of our constituents when the matters are so diverse?

That was Stephen Harper in 1994. He spoke against the government’s omnibus budget bill. It was 24 pages long, compared to the hundreds of pages we’ve seen since. Clearly, he had a change of heart after forming government in 2006. But so did the current Prime Minister, who, when campaigning in 2016 while in opposition, promised that whereas:

Stephen Harper . . . used omnibus bills to prevent Parliament from properly reviewing and debating his proposals. We will change the House of Commons Standing Orders to bring an end to this undemocratic practice.

Governments of all partisan stripes come into office promising to curb this practice but end up succumbing to it. As described by the Winnipeg-based Frontier Centre for Public Policy, “Nothing increases voter cynicism more than politicians using tricks to advance partisanship over the common good.”

This could be laughable if it weren’t so lamentable. The crucial balance between legislative efficiency and democratic accountability is being overturned, and we, my honourable colleagues, may well be seen as complicit.

I focus my final remarks on a few specific elements of Bill C-47 that concern me and underscore why I feel that the omnibus nature of this budget bill has weakened our role as legislators.

In Senator Loffreda’s remarks regarding Division 17, which proposes substantial changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, he referred to observations put forward by the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, or SOCI, that warned, first, that refugee caps may result in the exclusion of those who are most in need of refugee protection; and, second, that the increased use and reliance upon artificial-intelligence-assisted decision making in the refugee claimant process is of great concern.

Again, these observations from SOCI, along with scores of others, attest to the dangers of omnibus legislation. Each of the proposed changes to current immigration and citizenship laws are substantial, with wide-ranging ramifications; they merit deeper scrutiny, study and debate, far more than was possible. I am hard pressed to understand how they are intrinsically related to the budget implementation process. These changes should have been introduced as separate legislation and not embedded in the budget bill.

According to the government, the caps on refugees are needed to reduce the processing backlog, and the group-of-five and community sponsorships are responsible for those backlogs at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, or IRCC. This was the position put forward by immigration officials in their very brief appearance at committee.

During COVID, the IRCC inventory and backlog grew to over 2.7 million. Following the pandemic, however, IRCC expanded the digitization of applications and hired over 1,000 additional staff. According to numbers from IRCC as of April 26, there were 110,661 refugee applications — 38,681 government‑assisted and 71,980 privately sponsored refugees — awaiting processing. Yet as recently as May 2023, Minister Fraser is quoted as saying that, despite COVID or the recent public service strike, IRCC is on track to very shortly return to pre-pandemic service standards in most application streams.

It is difficult to reconcile on one hand the imposition of this private sponsorship cap system when, on the other hand, the minister recently announced an expansion of other refugee streams.

I note that private sponsorship, which includes sponsorship agreement holders, group-of-five and community sponsors, contributes more than $135 million annually in refugee settlement funding. Private sponsorship accounts for much of all refugee resettlement in Canada. Private sponsorship helps Canada welcome more refugees each year than the Government of Canada could possibly settle alone.

Last night, at Pearson airport, two young Afghan women got off a plane from Pakistan, reuniting with their family members, including an older lawyer sister, whom I helped evacuate days after the fall of Kabul in 2021 and who came to Canada as a government-sponsored refugee; and another older doctor sister, who arrived in Canada just a few days ago, in large part due to support from the Afghan Women’s Organization, her private sponsors and interventions by another doctor, our own Senator Ravalia. This Afghan woman doctor was a high-profile human rights defender in her practice and a leading spokeswoman for sexual and reproductive rights in Afghanistan. We have written documentation that she has been on a Taliban “kill list” and her security in Pakistan was very much in question. Private sponsorships save lives and they provide additional supports upon arrival that rebuild and sustain lives as refugees become productive, committed Canadians.

In committee, we heard that the stream of government-assisted refugee figures will also be decreased annually between now and 2025. Adding it up, we’re looking at a situation where there is a modest increase in private sponsorships.

In closing, I want to point out that there are legitimate concerns in the inclusion of such trenchant changes to IRCC practices. Having said that, I do consider this a confidence bill and I will vote to support it because the government has to be able to operate. Thank you. Meegwetch.