Thank you, Senator Harder, for those comments. I would echo some of them for sure.

I would also like to just say a few words on Senator Gold’s motion on the pre-study of Bill C-20.

I’m going to start by quoting from the late senator Elaine McCoy’s 2017 article:

Senate delays are just another urban myth

Instead of focusing on the myth that the Senate routinely delays government legislation, we should look at how it performs its constitutional duties.

She goes on to say:

In other words, the Senate does not delay passage of government legislation. It’s the other way around: the government delays passage of its own Bills, since it’s the government that enjoys near-total control of the House of Commons most of the time. It sits on Bills for months on end in its own chamber. . . .

What’s more, it turns out that the government has been broadcasting this myth for as long as we’ve had a Senate. In the very first session of Canada’s Parliament 150 years ago, senators complained about ministers pushing them to pass legislation at the speed of light toward the end of the parliamentary session. Senators were expected to shuffle Bills “in one door and out the other,” one senator complained in the chamber during a session shortly after Confederation. A Senate committee formally reviewed the allegation of delay in 1868 and found it to be unfounded. Instead, the culprit was the government itself, which was holding legislation back.

All these years later, the rhetoric stays the same. It’s a convenient cover story when the government wants to divert attention from its own foot-dragging on numerous files.

Bill C-20 sits squarely within the parameters of Senator McCoy’s allegations. Senator Harder has already referred to some of this. It was introduced in the House of Commons on May 19, 2022 — a full two years ago. This bill then spent six months at second reading. It was then sent to committee, where it languished a full seven months before the committee started its study.

The committee held 13 meetings. Then the government waited seven months before putting the report up for debate, and we still have no idea when the report will be debated in the House, and certainly not when the bill will be debated at third reading. It hasn’t even been debated at report stage yet.

In fairness, Senator Gold has no idea when this bill will be here. It could be next week. It could be next fall. But it is coming with the proviso that it is urgent, so the Senate must move it through committee quickly.

Does this Liberal government take us for fools? Do they not know that every senator has access to LEGISinfo and that we can see the slow creep of this bill through the House of Commons?

We can also see that 35 government bills have received Royal Assent before this bill. This government deemed 35 bills more important than Bill C-20, yet we are to believe that it has now risen to the level of urgent and must be passed as soon as possible.

No matter what Senator Gold tells us, it is clear that for the government Bill C-20 is not urgent, and the Senate committees do not do pre-studies on bills that are not urgent. In fact, almost all pre-studies are reserved for budget implementation acts, which we know we will receive very late. They are large, and the Senate is usually shy in amending them.

The other category of bills that are pre-studied are those that follow a court-imposed deadline and for which, therefore, the Senate does not have the latitude to set the schedule.

You will note that Senator Gold did not include a deadline for the committee to report on Bill C-20. Here’s what Senator Fraser, another good Liberal senator, said in 2014:

What’s the deadline going to be for this pre-study? There is none in the main motion to conduct the pre-study. So we have to rush up the motion to conduct the pre-study, but who knows how long that will take.

However, I note that Senator Runciman’s motion in amendment does suggest a possible rush for the pre-study, too, in that it suggests that the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee would sit while the Senate is sitting or adjourned. That’s usually done only when there is pressure to achieve a rapid committee result.

Now, as you know, I often quote ghosts from the Liberals’ past in the Senate, but here is what a sitting senator said when she was in opposition. I am speaking about our own Senator Jane Cordy, back in 2014:

Honourable senators, if I believed a pre-study would make a difference, I would be the first in line to promote it; but I do not believe that it would make a difference. If I believed that the voices of Canadians would be listened to in a pre-study, I would be first in line to promote the pre-study; but I don’t believe that a pre-study would do this. If I believed that the committee doing the pre-study would use the time to travel to the regions of Canada to let Canadians talk to them, I would promote the pre-study; but in light of Senator Carignan’s comments to me last Thursday, I do not believe that this will happen.

Senator Grant Mitchell, who was a member of the Government Representative Office, said when he was in opposition:

Pre-studies have become, in effect, a kind of veneer used by this government to try to cover up the damage it has done to the very foundation of our parliamentary democracy.

The last Liberal leader in the Senate, Senator Joe Day, was not a fan of pre-studies for bills other than budget bills. Here is what he had to say on November 23, 2017:

I am generally cautious about pre-study. I know it’s in the Rules. I know it can be a useful tool from time to time. But in my view, it takes us away from being a chamber of sober second thought. It puts us into a concurrent role with the House of Commons, and that has always caused me concern. I’ve spoken about that in the past.

Also, as he said on December 10, 2014, “. . . pre-studies of legislation . . . distracts from the role we traditionally have of providing sober second thought . . . .”

Again, in November 2017, Senator Day said:

The House of Commons should not take for granted that we will bypass or circumvent our normal and traditional practices in order to compensate its own failings in managing its agenda.

Finally, here is a quote from May 8, 2017:

Successive governments have brought forward complex legislation on different topics and then told us it was urgent and that a pre-study in the Senate would help move it along. But, colleagues, that is not our role here in the Senate. Our role is to consider legislation after it has been reviewed and passed by the other place. We are a chamber of sober second thought. Pre-studies fly in the face of that role that the Senate was intended to fulfill in our parliamentary democracy. And too often, a pre-study is then used by the government of the day to justify pressure on us to rush through the real job, and that is examining the bill when it does arrive here, as amended or otherwise.

I leave the final quote to my very good friend Terry Mercer. Terry Mercer was always someone who mostly replied softly when we wanted something done; you could just hear him quietly say, “No.” The Speaker always heard him when he said that. He was quiet. Our Speaker has a harder time hearing me, and I’m much louder, but he just said “no” when we asked for something. I’m sorry, Your Honour, you do hear me.

Terry Mercer said:

Honourable senators, Senator Harder today said what pre‑study will do, the Senate would do if it had the actual bill. Well, this would happen if the House of Commons would actually get off their butts and get the job done and get the bill through the House of Commons.

This is still Senator Mercer talking:

Senator Harder went on to talk about us having work to do. He is absolutely right. But so does the House of Commons. . . .

This pre-study will continue to allow the House of Commons to treat the Senate with little or no respect. This pre-study will continue to allow the House of Commons to be lazy and too lazy to get their work done in a timely fashion. Canadians expect better than that. Voters expect better than that. . . .

I have a message for the House of Commons: Stop wasting our time and get off your butts and do your job. Public expectation is that the House of Commons will do its job. We expect the House of Commons to do its job because everyone knows we’re ready to do ours and I will not be supporting a pre-study.

I think if Senator Mercer were here today, he would call this a colossal waste of time.

Also, I would like to trot out the well-worn mantra that committees are masters of their own domains. Therefore, if the Standing Senate Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs wishes to study the subject matter of Bill C-20 as a separate matter, they can certainly do so, and said study might aid them in their future study of Bill C-20. Even if this bill were to justify a pre-study, it does not justify ramming it through committee and forcing the committee to sit while the Senate is sitting.

We are in the last few weeks of sitting. Senator Gold has given us the government’s list of bills that it wishes to be passed by the end of June. All of these bills must be fully debated at second reading and third reading in the chamber, and all senators should be allowed to participate fully in those debates. They need to be in the chamber.

Taking senators away from the chamber sittings to study a bill in committee that is two years old is absurd. This bill should be given full and thorough study, as warrants its subject. The committee should be allowed to take its time and proceed in its regular time slot. This will allow members of the committee to take part in the study, yet be able to be present in the chamber during the sittings.

We already have a pre-study on the budget bill that will necessitate committees to meet while the Senate is sitting. This will mean that senators will already miss some sittings. This has to stop, colleagues. There is simply no reason to have a pre-study take place while the Senate is sitting.

Colleagues, I do not support a pre‑study. If, at the end, a pre‑study is necessitated, it has to be done in a way that does not prevent us from being in this chamber. As I’ve said, if the chair and the steering committee of the Defence Committee see fit, they can simply start studying the subject matter, as they are, indeed, masters of their own destiny. But it has to be done in their regular time slot.