Point of Order

Honourable senators, I rise today on a point of order because I believe the chamber was misled, perhaps not intentionally, but something was said on the record that does not line up with our Rules and practices on pre-studies, which have been in effect since the 1970s.

This deals with a debate that happened in our chamber on May 7, 2026, on the pre-study motion of Bill C-20, Bill C-25 and Bill C-30. I understand it has been several weeks since that debate, but seeing as how National Finance has only now reported back on its pre-study of Bill C-30, and we have Government Motion No. 82 laying out the schedule for Bill C-30’s formal study this week, I believe my issue is relevant and thought it best to rise now.

It also took some time and effort to determine the Rules were incorrectly applied and that a solution that was said in debate on record goes against the Rules.

During debate on May 7, Senator Moreau quoted the Rules of this chamber, which, if left uncorrected, could have deleterious effects on our work in the future. If committees were, in fact, entitled to do what Senator Moreau said, then we would have no need for formal direction from the chamber for committees to study government business.

Your Honour, I hope you will offer me some leniency here to go into what was said on the record before naming the rules that were incorrectly applied and how the chamber was misled.

I will be very brief here, but it does require me to quote what was said on the record, as we are speaking about our Rules being misapplied.

You may recall I rose on that pre-study motion to put forward an amendment that Divisions 7 and 8 of Part 3 of Bill C-30 concerning mandate changes to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Pesticides Regulatory Directorate and new powers for the Governor-in-Council in relation to exemption orders and emergency orders be referred to the Agriculture and Forestry Committee. Under the pre-study motion, as originally drafted, the entire bill would have been referred to the National Finance Committee.

It was during debate on this amendment that Senator Moreau explained his dissent and laid out an alternative solution to achieve the same end.

Senator Moreau claimed that there was another way for the Agriculture and Forestry Committee to study Bill C-30, despite the pre-study motion naming the National Finance Committee as the committee receiving the bill for pre-study, and I will quote what he said:

I submit to you, honourable colleagues, that the committee, pursuant to its order of reference, it is quite able to consider issues related to Bill C-30 and report back to the National Finance Committee, should it so wish, within the time allotted and suggested by Senator Robinson in her amendment.

When probed further, Senator Moreau explained:

I would say that the answer to your question is in the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry’s order of reference.

I’ll read you part of it. The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry is authorized “to examine and report on such issues as may arise from time to time relating to agriculture and forestry” in accordance with rule 12-7(12).

It’s not up to me to tell the committee how to do its job, but the standing committee does have the necessary authority, per its order of reference, to thoroughly examine any issue, particularly issues related to agriculture in Bill C-30.

And then he suggested that:

. . . the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, of which you are the chair, take up the agriculture-related provisions in Bill C-30 and report to the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance. Nothing is being bypassed here.

Your Honour, this is an incorrect application of our Rules. Committees do not report to each other, and a committee cannot study a bill as legislative text or its subject matter under its general order of reference.

Furthermore, caution is advised in examining the bill’s specific provisions. It was only when we tried to action on Senator Moreau’s advice that we were informed by the committee clerk of these things: Only broad topics and themes can be studied through a general order of reference. And if we go down the rabbit hole, what would happen if we followed Senator Moreau’s misapplication of the Rules? The National Finance Committee, when it was referred Bill C-30 for pre-study, had a clear and narrow scope of work assigned to it from this chamber. Their mandate was to only study the divisions in Bill C-30. Anything more would be considered out of scope.

So if the Agriculture and Forestry Committee reported to the National Finance Committee with a broad agriculture-related report, the committee might have found that to be out of scope. Irrespective of all of that, this interpretation of the Rules would be establishing a fundamentally new precedent — again, inconsistent with our current practices — that any committee can, under its general order of reference, study government legislation that this chamber has already assigned to another committee for study.

Even worse so, it would open the doors for a Senate committee to decide to study government legislation as soon as it would be tabled in the House, potentially before the House even had an opportunity to study the legislation in their own committees.

When Senator Moreau spoke against my amendment, he offered this alternative solution on the record to achieve the same results. This is an important context, and this is where I believe the chamber was misled, as our Rules do not apply in such a manner. The Agriculture and Forestry Committee cannot study the agriculture-related provisions in Bill C-30, neither can it report directly to the National Finance Committee.

Although Senator Moreau said that on the record on May 7, this is not a permissible solution within our Rules, yet these words by Senator Moreau remain in our public debates for anyone to cite.

Your Honour, I appreciate your leniency with me, and so I will end with this: It is important that the information presented to senators be accurate and consistent with our Rules and accepted practices. Providing inaccurate information, even unintentionally, harms the culture of the Senate and risks having deleterious effects on our work as the complementary chamber to the House of Commons.

To be clear, I am not implying here that Senator Moreau deliberately misinformed the chamber. I believe Senator Moreau was genuine in his intent to identify a way forward.

I am hopeful he will correct the record or, at the very least, clarify his intention, but in the absence of that, I only thought it right to rise and pose this point of order. What was said on May 7 was inconsistent with the application of our Rules, and when it was presented as an alternative to my amendment as a way forward that could help achieve the same end, it was misleading. Thank you, Your Honour.

Are there any other senators who wish to speak on this point of order?

Your Honour, the point of order is not very clear. May I suggest that we review the point of order raised by Senator Robinson before we vote to see whether there are indeed any facts that need to be corrected? I believe that would be in the best interests of this chamber. That way, if there are any factual errors, they could be corrected. If there are no errors, the chamber would be informed. I would like clarification on the point we are looking at today.

Thank you.

I certainly accept the decision of this august chamber to not approve my amendment, and that is not my point today. I accept that wholeheartedly.

My concern is that the suggestion that was made to me as the Chair of the Agriculture and Forestry Committee was that the Agriculture and Forestry Committee would, within its general order of reference, have the ability to study this and report to the National Finance Committee. When I consulted with my committee clerk, I was told that there was no mechanism for us to study something that had been assigned to another committee. There was no mechanism for my committee to report to the National Finance Committee to inform the pre-study, and I wanted to ensure that we were not setting a precedent here by not correcting the record.

Would any other senators like to speak?

I will go back and read the Debates and comments received, and I will come back with a decision. I will take this under advisement.