Honourable senators, I rise tonight to speak to Government Motion No. 96, which proposes to allocate a further six full hours of debate respecting the motion in response to the House’s message to the Senate on Bill C-11.

Colleagues, I’m moving this motion out of a sense of duty, not one of pleasure, but I also move this motion firm in the conviction that the government has acted properly and with the utmost respect for the Senate’s legislative process; firm in the conviction that we in the Government Representative Office, or GRO, have done so quite literally every step of the way; firm in the conviction that I am not proposing the curtailment of genuine debate; and firm in the conviction that it is necessary now to break through a clearly orchestrated pattern of deliberate obstruction so that we can finally move to a democratic vote.

The decision to apply time allocation to any item of government business is one I do not take lightly. I think I can say this with some credibility given that the GRO has not invoked time allocation before.

However, I am entirely comfortable that this is the responsible course of action before us. Tonight, I’m going to focus my remarks on two aspects of the issue that we in the GRO feel are important to underscore. First, I want to speak to the context and process that has brought us to this motion today. Second, I wish to address the mechanics of the motion and the purpose of Chapter Seven of our Rules, that is the chapter that provides for time allocation.

Let me begin with the context. Colleagues, in doing so, I want to bring you into my confidence. I want to share with you the reasoning behind several strategic decisions that we made in the GRO concerning the process around the study and debate of Bill C-11, including the exhaustive amount of time that this chamber has spent considering this bill.

Quite a long time ago, honourable senators, we in the GRO made the decision that, in dealing with this legislation, we would do our very best to try to shelter the work of the Senate from an overly charged, partisan political arena in the other place, and to try to do whatever we could to allow senators from all groups the opportunity to contribute constructively to the legislative process.

At the very beginning, as soon as the Senate received former Bill C-10, the bill’s sponsor, Senator Dawson, and I were very clear with the government that the Senate was going to take as much time as necessary to study the bill.

Despite what might have been transpiring among the political parties in the House of Commons, we made sure that the Senate took all the time that was necessary — I think we kept our word and then some — as of May 2022, with our proposal to conduct a pre-study in the Senate.

On May 31, 2022, the Senate adopted a motion authorizing the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications to undertake the pre-study on the subject matter of the bill. The committee was afforded all the necessary procedural authorities, including the ability to meet while the Senate was sitting or adjourned to maximize its time and ensure that a comprehensive work plan could be developed.

The committee did not hold its first meeting with witnesses until June 21, 2022, nearly three weeks after the original motion had been adopted. Having launched the pre-study, the GRO expended significant political capital at the highest level of government to secure the time that the Senate needed based upon a written agreement reached in June of last year with the Leader of the Opposition in this place, which was signed by all leaders, for a final third reading vote in November of 2022.

I have that agreement with me here today, colleagues, for anyone who might wish to confirm its authenticity. Paragraph 5 of the agreement stipulates:

With respect to the Senate’s consideration of Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts: [. . .] achievement of a 3rd reading Senate vote no later than Friday, November 18th, unless debate has collapsed earlier.

At the bottom of this agreement, one can see the signatures of Senators Tannas, Cordy, Saint-Germain and myself. It is also signed by Senator Plett, committing the Conservative Senate caucus in his capacity as leader of the official opposition.

As we all know, during the summer adjournment period, the Conservative Party of Canada selected a new leader. With that leadership, it was evident that the terms of the agreement would no longer be respected.

The bill was introduced at first reading in the Senate on June 21, 2022, so about eight months ago, and has been studied and debated extensively.

On September 21, 2022, the bill’s sponsor, Senator Dawson, began the second reading debate, and the bill was either debated or continued for 12 legislative session days after that, finally passing second reading in the Senate on October 25, 2022.

Between the months of June and December 2022, the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications held 31 meetings, including the pre-study and actual study of the bill, along with nine meetings for clause-by-clause study, for a total of 67 hours and 30 minutes.

The committee heard from nearly 140 witnesses from various backgrounds including traditional broadcasters and newer online platforms, leaders in the arts and cultural communities, academics and researchers, online content creators, Indigenous stakeholders, union leaders and government officials, as well as Canadians with disabilities and those in minority groups.

Throughout this process, I remained optimistic that the terms of the original agreement would be respected. However, while I do not know when the instruction was given to the opposition to break the Bill C-11 agreement, the Conservative leadership did not formally communicate to us that the agreement was no longer valid until very close to the November 18 deadline.

Colleagues, throughout the fall, I had regularly raised Bill C-11’s timeline at the leadership table. For many weeks, we got evasive responses. We had heard rumours and speculations of a potential breach, but we continued to have faith in the signed agreement until the very end. But with no agreement in place in November, we accepted, very reluctantly, to give the Senate more time through December and into the new year.

Following our return from the Christmas break, the Senate adopted Bill C-11 at third reading on February 2, 2023.

Honourable colleagues, I want to be clear and unequivocal with you. I did not accept the additional time for the benefit of the official opposition who, by November, were engaging in a full-out filibuster at the committee.

We chose to come to the terms of a new agreement because that was the only pathway that would ensure that senators operating independently of partisan objectives, and with a genuine desire to seek improvements to the bill, would have a genuine opportunity to do so at the clause-by-clause stage. Time allocation would have punished not only the filibustering senators, but also those senators working constructively. We simply were not prepared to do that. We did not wish to do that and we did not do that.

As I said, our goal from the beginning on Bill C-11 was to ensure that the process itself could unfold in as non-partisan a way as is possible, and that senators would be able to do their jobs, the jobs for which we were summoned here to do. We delivered on this. With a new agreement in place, amendments and subamendments were pulled. We managed to complete the process properly. The amended bill was sent back to the other place on February 2, 2023.

After a month, colleagues, of careful consideration and due diligence by the government, it provided its response to the Senate’s work by accepting 20 of the 26 amendments in total. It was sent back to this chamber with the support of the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québécois.

That now brings us to the message before us. I want to stress, upon receipt of the message and in keeping with my role as Government Representative, I consulted with the leadership of all groups in good faith to try to implement a constructive timetable to consider Bill C-11 at the message stage.

Upon receipt of the message from the other place, I made my expectations very clear that the Senate ought to have a thorough debate that would have had us vote on the motion by the end of last week. That has been in line with the Senate’s customary approach to the disposition of messages from the other place in a timely fashion.

Colleagues, let me put this in perspective for you. During the Forty-second and Forty-third Parliaments, the Senate spent an average of less than two sitting days debating messages from the House of Commons. That statistic includes several substantial and controversial bills, like Bill C-45, the Cannabis Act; Bill C-69 on environmental assessments; Bill C-48 on the oil tanker moratorium; Bill C-14 and Bill C-7 on medical assistance in dying and Bill C-6, which implemented immigration reforms, to name but a few.

Regrettably, despite this and the very strong precedent that has existed in terms of the times that we’ve devoted to messages at this stage of our process, I was neither able to yield an agreement on a vote by the end of last week, nor was I even provided with a hint of a signal on what the intentions were of the opposition, or on the numbers of speakers or amendments.

As I mentioned in an earlier speech today, colleagues, I raised this bilaterally with the Leader of the Opposition last week. It was made clear that there would be no agreement to get this resolved by the end of last week.

We also sought, as I mentioned as well, to have assurances on a similar timeline at our scroll discussions — again, radio silence, to no avail.

Instead, debate was adjourned by the opposition for two consecutive days last week without any speaker taking the floor. This is despite a full two-week break to prepare for debate, and the message from the House being public knowledge for more than a month.

It also is despite the fact that the Government Representative Office, or GRO, shared its procedural intentions in an open and transparent fashion with all Senate groups, including the text of the motion in response to the message and the text of a motion in amendment that was drafted in collaboration with Senator Tannas.

On Thursday, colleagues, we were treated to the all-too-familiar merry-go-round of amendment and subamendment, followed by another adjournment motion and a motion to adjourn the Senate, which took us into the night and disrupted other items of business that senators might have wished to address.

Had we decided to do nothing, colleagues, I suspect we would all be here today rinsing and repeating this sad, sorry state of affairs and sequence of events.

Colleagues, while I have tried to remain optimistic that common sense would prevail at this stage of the message, I’m not naive. I am not surprised given the public statements by the Leader of the Conservative Party urging senators to prevent this bill from passing.

The Leader of the Conservative Party in the other place in a video posted to Twitter on March 30 stated the following in relation to Bill C-11, after its adoption in the House of Commons:

We have some real free speech warriors there, led by Leo Housakos, the great Spartan warrior, who held the thing up in the Senate for almost a year — a good part of the year. It’s going back to the Senate right now. He’s going to fight like hell to stop it from passing it.

This is in addition to an active website entitled KillBillC11.ca, authorized in the name of Conservative Member of Parliament Rachael Thomas which calls upon the Senate to defeat the bill despite being duly passed by the elected House of Commons.

Let us not be naive about the context before us. There is an ongoing effort to kill this bill and to prolong this process for as long as possible for the sole purpose of partisan advantage.

As the context I have described shows, the GRO has been constructive. The record will show that the Senate conducted a considerably thorough study and successfully made numerous amendments to the bill. We have done nothing to curtail debate.

As the context also shows, we have also been on the receiving end of broken promises and deliberate procedural gamesmanship. This is where Chapter Seven of our Rules comes in, and this is where I turn our attention now.

With respect to the time allocation motion before us, it is important that we understand and that Canadians who are watching us understand exactly what it is that I am proposing.

The motion would provide for an additional six hours of debate, after which the Senate will be able to vote democratically on the subamendment by Senator MacDonald, the amendment by Senator Plett and the main motion that I spoke to last week. I don’t think there’s anything abusive about this proposition. In practice, there is ample time for every senator in the opposition caucus to speak up to their maximum allotted time, with the Leader of the Opposition receiving up to 30 minutes to speak under this motion.

Under this motion, every member of the opposition, and all senators, have 10 minutes to speak to this phase of the process, and the Leader of the Opposition has 30 minutes. The time that we now have to debate gives ample opportunity for each and every opposition senator, and others, to speak. Now, during the time-allocated order — the six-hour debate — normal speaking times will apply as part of the six-hour debate.

Conceptually, it is important to be clear about the purpose of time allocation, because it is a tool that may be used abusively but that may also be used very legitimately in context where a chamber is prevented from reaching a decision.

Colleagues, I would argue that Chapter Seven of the Rules of the Senate was created for cases just like this one: cases where there is a history of dilatory tactics, cases where the objective has become delay for delay’s sake, cases where the procedural intentions of a party are being withheld from colleagues and cases where there is an effort to kill legislation through procedural delay.

It’s true: Time allocation gets a bad rap, and that’s largely because of its heavy-handed use by successive majority governments to stifle genuine debate, including in this chamber. It is important to remind ourselves that the original purpose of time allocation was not only to allow a government majority to manage the finite time of a legislative chamber, but also for the legislative body itself to overcome the use of tactics deliberately geared at delaying the progress of government legislation.

In a paper entitled Sober Second Thinking: How the Senate Deliberates and Decides, Senator Harder explains:

. . . if excessive time allocation is to be reviled, so too should tactics of delay that stifle substantive policy debates. Time allocation and dilatory obstruction are two sides of the same coin. Unfortunately, under current Senate rules, absent time allocation, obstructionist senators can postpone votes by adjourning debate virtually indefinitely. Attempts to call for an immediate vote to move legislation forward can be filibustered, leading to stare-downs that can last for many days and monopolize the Chamber’s time.

Having been here for some years now, colleagues, I know exactly what that looks like. To name just a few examples, one needs only to think back to our debates around bills like Bill C-16 on transgender rights, Bill C-45 on cannabis legislation, Bill C-210 on a gender-neutral national anthem, Bill C-262 on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP, and Bill S-203 on ending the captivity of whales and dolphins.

In the same paper, Senator Harder further notes:

Ultimately, to use such delay tactics to impede legislative review is not sober second thinking. Senators engaging in such practice do not showcase the “complementary” legislative role that the Canadian Constitution requires the Senate to perform. At a pivotal time in the Senate’s history, such practice is also damaging to the institution’s culture, encouraging needless conflict and distracting the Chamber from its public purpose.

In a nutshell, colleagues, time allocation can be either curative or abusive, and context is everything. Now, I don’t know about you, but I do not feel like last Thursday’s round of bells was a particularly efficient use of the Senate’s time and publicly funded resources.

Moreover, colleagues, as precedent demonstrates, there is nothing extraordinary about time allocation. In fact, it has been regularly applied to various stages of government business — and in many instances under the previous government after little or no actual debate. However, since the Forty-second Parliament, both under myself and my predecessor, Senator Harder, time allocation has not been invoked once — not once on a single item of government business. I believe this has been a testament to our desire to find collaboration and consensus on moving the government’s legislative agenda forward in a timely manner. Regrettably, sadly, this is no longer the case with respect to Bill C-11.

Colleagues, you are undoubtedly going to hear from some in this chamber that invoking time allocation on a bill of this magnitude is paramount to stifling debate and not in keeping with the Senate’s role of sober second thought. Let me put this in historical perspective. The previous government, represented by the members opposite me, invoked time allocation on 22 separate occasions alone during the Forty-first Parliament — in some cases after only a single day of debate at a particular stage of a government bill.

In the case of Bill C-19, a bill which had sought to eliminate the long-gun registry and reflected an electoral commitment of the former government, Senator Carignan, then Deputy Leader of the Government, gave notice of a motion to allocate time after only a single day of debate at third reading, even before the critic was afforded an opportunity to speak. In justifying the need for time allocation, Senator Carignan outlined his perspective on April 3, 2012, as follows:

I believe that it was important to set a time limit, a sufficient amount of time in which senators could debate and express their opinions, as they were able to do previously at second reading. There have been many debates on both sides of this issue, but we should be able to end this debate, once and for all, within the time allocated so that we can pass this bill, ensure that the will of Canadians is translated into a reasonable and effective bill, and move on to other bills that are just as important to Canadian society.

Therefore, if we are to apply Senator Carignan’s logic, given the considerable debate this chamber has had on Bill C-11, the Senate ought to have the right in the face of procedural obstacles to have this bill adopted in a timely way to reflect the will of the elected house.

Indeed, our colleague Senator Plett made a very strong point that the time allocation process does indeed provide a window for senators to debate legislation in the face of apparent delay. On June 11, 2014, Senator Plett noted the following on a motion to time-allocate Bill C-23, known as Fair Elections Act, after only one day of debate at third reading. Senator Plett said:

I would like to say that in fact time allocation opens debate. We are now debating. We are debating time allocation. We will debate the motion. In fact, adjourning debate is stifling debate. That is what the opposition tries time and time again if they don’t have any other avenue — let’s adjourn this.

In the same speech, he later said, “When you can’t reach an agreement, you have to do something.”

Colleagues, for all these reasons, I believe now is the time to do something. The Government Representative Office, or GRO, has supported the Senate during Bill C-11’s legislative journey every step of the way. The GRO ensured that the senators operating in good faith could get their work done properly, and this was demonstrated time and time again, as I outlined earlier. Now, colleagues, I’m asking your support to bring this to a conclusion with six additional hours of debate and a democratic vote on the message from the House of Commons, a message supported by the government, the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québécois, all of whom campaigned on a platform to reform the Broadcasting Act, which is the subject of the message before us.

Colleagues, it is time to do something. Thank you for your kind attention.

I have a question for Senator Harder — I mean, Senator Gold. You’re interchangeable.

Senator Gold, will you answer questions?

I’m very reluctant to not answer questions, but I’m also mindful that we have a finite amount of time. I will take one question out of respect for the senator who has asked me and for the institution. Then, however, with your indulgence, I’m not going to take any further questions to give everyone else who wishes to speak on this time to speak.

Again, government leader, the tradition and history of this place are that the government leader, especially on bills and motions as important as this, indulge the Senate and take questions. I take exception with a number of the things you said in your speech. If you don’t give the opposition an opportunity to address them with questions and answers, again, it creates that frustration that we have in this place.

I just want to deal with a couple of issues. You brought up how the opposition uses adjournments in order to stifle things. Every group in this place, when they want to stifle something, slow something down, take their time with it or negotiate it, take an adjournment on motions. It is nothing new. The government does it, the opposition does it, and, of course, since 2016, all groups do it.

The other thing is that I love the fact that you’re actually starting to pay attention to Pierre Poilievre’s videos. But what I take exception with is that you think it is somewhat partisan that Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the opposition in the House of Commons, is publicly involved in a public debate opposing a government bill that Rachael Thomas, the critic on Bill C-11 in the House of Commons is on video —

I am asking a question, Your Honour, but I would like to give him some context. Colleagues, again, there is a tradition in this place of allowing some context in questions and answers.

The government leader said that Pierre Poilievre and Rachael Thomas in the other place were out there campaigning against Bill C-11. Are you equally offended when Prime Minister Trudeau and Minister Rodriguez put out their videos or when they defend in the public arena and talk about how Bill C-11 is a good thing? Are you equally offended?

Thank you for your question. You have misunderstood the point I was trying to make, so thank you for the opportunity to clarify it.

The context within which we’re debating time allocations — the context is the deliberate campaign to kill this bill. This is not an example of speeches being adjourned or time being taken to prepare a speech in order to make sure the contribution is constructive for the advancement of the bill. I cited your leader’s characterization of you as a “Spartan warrior” to illustrate the point that it is no secret, certainly not to members in this chamber. It is one thing to oppose a bill. It is another thing to enlist this body in an effort to kill a bill that has the democratic approval of the majority of the House of Commons and to do so while pretending to be simply seeking to improve the bill.

With the greatest of respect, you may be happy with the title of “Spartan warrior.” I would rather see myself as a defender of democracy, and time allocation is an appropriate tool to be used to combat dilatory, obstructionist delay tactics for purely partisan reasons. It is an appropriate tool to give this Senate and the senators who are summoned here to do work on behalf of Canadians the ability to pronounce, first, on whether or not they agree with the government’s proposal to add six more hours of debate and then have the question called, and, ultimately, at the end of the day, the senators have the right to pronounce whether or not they will accept my proposal to accept the message from the other house.

We were brought here to do work on behalf of Canadians. We were brought here to exercise judgment, and in that regard this motion that I am urging you to support is one which will give us an opportunity to do the job for which we were summoned here, the privilege to serve Canadians and to stop a never-ending campaign, a campaign that would never end but for the invocation of time allocation for the benefit of Canadians. Thank you.

Honourable senators, I’m not sure how to start this. We have a government leader who is wanting to move a bill forward, who says, “I will answer one question and then I will not answer any more questions.”

Excuse me. Did you want to continue debate? Thank you.

Senator Gold said — and Hansard will show that he said — he would refuse a second question. Now he’s saying that time ran out again. That is somewhat fudging the truth, Senator Gold. You said you would not accept a second question.

I find that very disconcerting when the government leader refuses to answer questions from members opposite, and yet he is the one who is a “defender of democracy.” Hallelujah! Thank you that Senator Gold finally came to the chamber to defend democracy because I don’t know how this chamber could possibly have operated for the last 150 plus years without Prime Minister Trudeau’s appointments — “independent appointments” who have voted 96% in favour of the government and yet sit in this chamber and say they are independent, over and over again.

We have still four, maybe five, senators left who have admitted that they would love to still be in a Liberal caucus, but because of Trudeau’s wonderful reformed Senate, they have chosen to go to their own caucuses.

We’ve had a few members leave, and they now vote, occasionally, for Liberal budgets. I don’t understand that either. I don’t understand where this Senate has improved in the last few years.

My most memorable times in this Senate were my spats with my good friend Senator Terry Mercer, who was every bit as partisan as I am. Senator Ringuette knows it. So does Senator Cordy. So does Senator Massicotte. They know how partisan Senator Mercer was, and yet we were best friends because we understood this is a political chamber and we had two political parties here that went toe to toe and debated legislation and, on occasion, brought in time allocation.

I, for the life of me, don’t understand why Senator Gold is somehow trying to frame this as we are opposed to time allocation. We are not. We have supported time allocation many times. Ask Senator Carignan. We got appointed on the same day in 2009, and Senator Seidman.

We have seen time allocation. We supported it on our side and on the other side. That is not the issue, Senator Gold. The issue is you have no right. The Constitution, the Rules of the Senate say you have no right. You sit there one day as, “I’m an unaffiliated senator, I am an independent senator, I’m not a member of the government,” yet you are carrying the water of the government, and you are here telling us you have the right.

No, you don’t. I read the Rules today. It doesn’t matter how badly we want to change those Rules. What you did today, government leader, is you forced our Speaker to rewrite the Rules. That is what you, government leader, will go down in history as. You forced our Speaker to rewrite the Rules. Because it doesn’t matter what the Speaker says of this issue; it doesn’t change what the Rules say. The Rules say “recognized parties.” You are not part of a recognized party. You can’t have it both ways. “One day I’m part of a recognized party. One day I’m a Government Representative. The next day I’m a government leader. Today I will answer your questions. Tomorrow, when you question me about CBC, I will say, ‘Well, I don’t answer for CBC.’”

Someday, Senator Gold, you’re going to have to accept what you are, admit what you are.

To be or not to be.

I would not want to repeat what Senator Dalphond said. Somebody might again suggest it’s unparliamentary language. But Senator Dalphond alluded to something like “if it quacks like a duck and swims like a duck, it’s probably a duck.”

As I said earlier, we plan fully — so I will put everybody here on notice — on asking that Senator Gold be restyled as the “Leader of the Government in the Senate.” That’s what he professed to be today. Yes, I agree, Senator Lankin. We finally got it. That is what the Speaker said today.

Senator Gold, you’re going to have a hard time next week saying you are not the government leader.

Again, we’re not opposed to time allocation. Shortening debate on something that has gotten six hours of debate is not necessary.

This bill got into the Senate — well, there was a deal signed in the spring when we agreed to committee meetings in September. Now, the committee didn’t meet. It became evident in November that more meetings were needed, including for Indigenous witnesses, who had been overlooked, as Senator Klyne pointed out, at that point at committee — something the government did over there. They again neglected to consult with the Indigenous people, so now they had to slow things down.

They broke their word. You say I broke my word on a signed deal. You somehow only get certain facts there. You know why that deal was broken. I told you why that deal was broken. It was because the Government of Canada, the Liberal Party of Canada — Justin Trudeau and his cronies — broke the deal in the other place.

How long did it take the House? Message was sent on February 2. Amendments were known since December 14. The House adopted the message on March 30 — three and a half months after, Senator Gold, the amendments were known. Debate on them started on April 18, and Senator Gold put an end to that on April 20. And somewhere this is the opposition’s fault.

When the opposition does their job — as one of the great Liberal prime ministers of this country Jean Chrétien said, the job of the opposition is to oppose. We do our job, and members there say that we’re filibustering, or we’re doing something wrong. We’re doing our job.

I was sent to this place to do something. Senator Gold, you were sent here. You clearly feel that you have received a mandate. You have received direction from the Prime Minister, and you’re doing your job. I respect that part of what you’re doing.

But why, colleagues, can you not accept and respect what the opposition is doing?

We don’t dislike individuals in this chamber. Here’s one thing about Senator Mercer and I: When I attacked Senator Mercer in the chamber, he never took that personally. He never thought, “Don doesn’t like me.” This was a political exchange, and when the Senate debate was over, we went out and had a beer. We travelled together, and we were on parliamentary associations together. For almost all of my time that matched Senator Mercer’s time, we were on the same committees, and we dealt together on those committees — on the Agriculture Committee and on the Transport Committee. We did great work on those committees.

I don’t know how often I have heard today that the Prime Minister has made this a more non-partisan chamber. This chamber has never been as partisan as it is today, colleagues.

It has not — and I don’t say that as a shot at any senator here, but I cannot make an argument here without senators taking offence and saying, “Don Plett is attacking me.” I’m sorry, but that’s not what I’m doing.

I’m attacking the Liberal Party of Canada because I believe they are the worst thing for this country; I believe that. I respect your beliefs — respect mine. I believe this Prime Minister is the very worst prime minister that this country has ever had, and that includes his dad — and he and I didn’t get along. But at least when Pierre Elliott Trudeau was the Prime Minister, I felt that we had an adult in charge of our country.

I say that here, and that is somehow unparliamentary, and we’re being bad people because we express our opinions — because we’re political.

Senator Gold wants to have the power to do this, but he didn’t have the power before. Now, our Speaker has rewritten the Rules to give him the power to cut off debate. Again, it doesn’t matter how you feel about it. Two hours ago, you did not have the right to do what you can now because of the Rules — one individual rewrote the Rules, whether you like that or not. You can shake your head all you want; that is simply the fact of the matter.

The Rules are clear. When it says “recognized parties,” Senator Gold, it doesn’t matter; that’s not a big word to change — recognized parties, or recognized groups.

I think Senator Dalphond somehow interpreted recognized groups having the same power and the same rights as recognized parties because the leaders of the recognized groups received a raise in pay. And Senator Gold receives $92,000 for being the Leader of the Government. I don’t know where that plays into it, but the fact of the matter is that the other recognized groups do not have the same power that the opposition has or the same power that the government has. That was intentional.

Senator Harder was very much instrumental in opening up that Parliament of Canada Act, and when Minister LeBlanc was here today, many of us had conversations with the minister at that point. He made commitments to me; I won’t share them here, but he made commitments to me. He said, “This is what we want. This is as far as we want the chamber to go.” They recognized four groups. They didn’t want to go beyond that; they made it clear. Senator Saint-Germain will attest to that, as will Senator Tannas, I’m sure, and Senator Cordy. They will attest to this being what Minister LeBlanc said: “We don’t want to go beyond that.”

If they wanted you to have the power that you have now gotten through the back door — you couldn’t get through the front door — they would have given it to you. They would have dealt with it.

Today, Senator Lankin said, “Why send it to the Rules Committee? That’s where things go to die” — and we can’t have a committee that works on consensus. Why? We had committees that worked on consensus when we had the two most partisan parties in Canada, and they were the only parties here. We dealt on consensus. Everything that we did at the Standing Senate Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration — Senator Housakos, you were there, and Senator Furey was there — was done by consensus. That was with two political parties. Now, all of a sudden, when we have a non-partisan chamber, we can’t deal on consensus anymore.

Colleagues, think about that for a while when you say that you are making this chamber less partisan — because you’re not.

I’m admitting to what I am: I’m a Conservative. I’m proud to be a Conservative. I’m proud to have conservative values. If you are proud to have liberal values, then stand up and say that. Don’t tell us that you are independent and you will vote your own way, and then you vote — 96% of the time — in favour of the government.

Senator Gold said that we had a deal, or at least he indicated a deal. In my previous life, I did a lot of negotiating. I negotiated on behalf of municipalities, and I negotiated on behalf of different organizations. When there was a negotiation, there were two sides, at least, talking.

The fact of the matter is, colleagues, that Senator Gold did say, without question on last Monday, that he would have liked to have had this bill passed by last Thursday. There’s no question — no denial there.

Typically, Senator Gold asks Senator Saint-Germain first regarding what she’s planning to put up for speakers. He then asks me. He then typically goes to either Senator Tannas or Senator Cordy and asks for their opinions — he did that. I will not share their opinions; I will only share mine. I said, “Senator Gold, we don’t have a motion for this. You’re asking me to tell you how many speakers we’re going to have, and I don’t have a motion. I would like that, and then I’ll be prepared to debate this and discuss it.” I don’t think anyone can deny that’s the conversation. He didn’t know why.

One of the senators said, “It will be a two-line motion. It doesn’t take a long time.” And I said, “You’re right. How long would it take you to write that?” It would take my staff about 10 minutes. This government has had two weeks, and they haven’t written this two-line motion. Why?

Then, I have to raise my suspicions a bit: Why aren’t they giving us a motion? It is a very simple thing. So I said, “Tomorrow, when we see that motion” — because I was told we would have it before midnight. I didn’t have it before midnight. My chief of staff did, but I was in bed when he got it. God love him, he didn’t wake me; he waited until the next day to give me the motion.

That day, we debated that motion. Senator Tannas offered an amendment. The next day, the government accepted that amendment. Talks were going on. Senator Gold called me about that amendment and whether or not we would support it. I suggested to him to at least wait until tomorrow — and we probably will, but I would like to wait until tomorrow because I would like to contemplate because I haven’t talked to my caucus. I’m not wanting to put words in your mouth, Senator Gold. He said, “Okay, let me think about that.” Then he called back and he said, “No, we’re planning on going ahead today.” I said, “Okay, Senator Gold, but we can’t support that today, so we will take the adjournment and we will likely pass it the next day,” which we did. We passed it the next day. We didn’t have a vote; we agreed to it. Senator Gold said, “Don, I think you and I should talk further this week.”

Honourable senators, I say this honestly. I did not believe that he was still thinking he was getting a bill on Thursday. I said, “Yes, we should. I would be happy to talk.” I said maybe we would talk before our leaders’ meeting next Monday. He said, “Well, I think we should talk earlier. I said, “Okay, maybe we can talk Thursday.” But, I said, “Senator Gold, I hope you understand that we’re not ready to call question on this on Thursday.” I’ll be the first one to admit that.

There’s no negotiation there, colleagues. We haven’t even started debate. We have not even started debate in this chamber, and he wants, in one day, for me to agree to something that has taken two-and-a-half or three years’ time? How on earth the Speaker could make a decision today on that is beyond me because Senator Gold gave us less than 30 hours to deal with a bill that had been around for three years? Is this how rulings are supposed to be done?

Again, it doesn’t matter, honourable senators, what side of the political spectrum we’re on. We have an obligation to Canadians. The Conservative Party of Canada speaks for 7 million-plus Canadians. We won the popular vote in the last two elections. We have a duty — an honour-bound duty — to speak on behalf of those 7 million Canadians, and there will be more in the next election. We have a duty, and for us to be considered as people who are filibustering and as people who are not cooperating in the Senate because we are defending Conservative values, I really find that disconcerting.

I’ve been asked lately — and I know that many of you would encourage that I take the advice of some people and say, “Don, why are you beating yourself over the head? Why don’t you retire from the Senate?” I know there are probably those who would be happy to give me a going away present if I did that, but I say there are still more good days than bad. I still have hope. I said that to a couple that was in my office today. I still believe that I am speaking on behalf of many Canadians, and I want to continue to support those Canadians. I want to speak on behalf of those Canadians.

Again, this is not about whether or not we support time allocation. I have never said, Senator Gold, that we don’t. I fully expected, Senator Gold, that if we did not move this bill forward in the next week or two — and you and I have had those discussions, Senator Gold. You and I had those discussions just a few months ago when you offered. You said, “Don, if you need some help, I can probably help you.” There was no question that we were anticipating that we’ll have a limited amount of time to debate this bill in this chamber before you would at least try time allocation.

Would we have done the same thing we are doing today? Yes, we probably would have because I still believe you don’t have the right. By the rules, you don’t have the right on a number of issues, which I pointed out earlier. We would have still made that argument. But you, Senator Gold, would have given us an opportunity — you would have given Canadians an opportunity that you are taking away from them, not the opposition. We are here ready to debate this.

Yes, I presented an amendment the other day. I presented a very reasonable amendment, and that amendment was to simply go back to the government one time and say that we expect you to accept our amendment. That was the amendment. There was nothing untoward about that amendment. The fact of the matter is we all know procedures, and we needed to make sure that we wouldn’t be — Senator Lankin and I go back to a private member’s bill a few years ago where she got the better of me. Full marks. I hold no grudges.

Do we have to make sure that won’t happen? Yes. Is that in any way an intention to filibuster this for three months? No. We knew full well, Senator Gold, that there would come a time when you would probably — unless we allowed this to go forward — do what you did tonight, and we would have hoped that we would have gotten what we believe was the right ruling. You obviously believe you got the right ruling, and that’s fine. We’ll do another battle on another day.

However, for you to do this after six hours of debate — six hours, not on the very first day of debate — to refuse to talk to the Leader of the Opposition, refuse to come to the Leader of the Opposition. When this happens — I talk to the House leader in the other place all the time. When Mark Holland plans on doing time allocation, he lets Andrew Scheer know, as well as the other House leaders. What do you do? I come across the floor on Thursday, right in front of your desk and I said to you, “Senator Gold, should we have a meeting?” Now is not the time. Half an hour later, your notice of motion comes forward, and you suggest that we aren’t to be trusted? That we aren’t the honourable people? I consider that very questionable.

I asked you at that time if we should meet. Whether that bill passed on Thursday or whether that bill passes today, this Thursday, next Tuesday or even next Thursday, what difference does that make? Unless the Prime Minister is running scared and he wants to get out of Ottawa for a while, and he says, “Senator Gold, Senator Furey, you had better help me out here. We can’t be in Ottawa.” You’re shaking your head. We’ll see whether there is any relevance to that at all because other than that, Senator Gold, what difference on a bill that’s been here for three years does another week make? I can’t understand that.

You could have come to me, Senator Gold, at any point and said, “Don, if you don’t give me this bill by this time, I’m going to invoke time allocation.” That would have been the professional and honourable thing to do. I would have accepted that. I would have stood here and I probably would have torn my shirt like I am now and say that you don’t have the right to do that, but at least that would have been the proper way to do that instead of backdooring. That doesn’t go away.

You suggest I broke a deal. No, the government broke a deal. You know very well — and I won’t raise it — about the deal that you broke to me one time, Senator Gold. I would be very careful how often you tell me I broke a deal before I start talking about that one because that one was a whole lot more personal than this one. You don’t want that brought up on the Senate floor, Senator Gold. I would be careful in how often you tell me that I have broken a deal. I broke no deal. The government broke a deal. The government did not do their consultations. So I said, Senator Gold, the government did not own up, did not do what they were supposed to do and did not do what they said they had done, so we can’t go forward with this. It had nothing to do with Pierre Poilievre’s videos or Senator Housakos’s videos. It had to do with standing up for Canadians.

This is censorship gold on a censorship bill.

Let me end off on this, Senator Gold, and you can turn around and say the same to me: You will reap what you sow. In the next election, you will reap what you sow. This Senate will again become a chamber of sober second thought where people will respect each other, and that will happen after the next election, whether you like it or not. People will again respect each other here, whether they are on one side of the government or the other. We will have respect, even if we get angry like this over the course of the evening. I will fly Friday morning with a couple of my Manitoba colleagues, and we will rub shoulders and tell each other how much we love each other on the weekend, and then on Monday or Tuesday we’ll come back here and do what we’re doing here today because that, colleagues, is the way this chamber should work. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Your Honour. Colleagues, even though I’ve been in this chamber for a bit more than six years, I rise for the first time to speak to a debate on a time allocation motion. This, a priori, leads me to make two important observations. The first is that time allocation is an exceptional process, a powerful and draconian tool with definitive consequences. My second observation is that this measure was treated with the restraint that is required of the government’s representatives, Senators Harder and Gold successively. It should be noted that this is the first time this exceptional practice has been used since this government came into power in 2015 and since the commencement of the Senate reform.

I will begin my intervention on this first time allocation motion in the Senate from this government by stating that I concur with many points brought forward by Senator Marc Gold in his speech today as well as in the one he gave last Tuesday when the message from the other place on Bill C-11, the online streaming act, was introduced in this chamber. I will not repeat every argument from Senator Gold, but I will insist on one point: how our role and actions as senators are bound by the Salisbury Convention and our complementary nature to the elected House of Commons.

Bill C-11, it can’t be denied, was part of the electoral platform of the Liberal Party of Canada. In fact, it had already been introduced before the last election, then known as Bill C-10, and was widely debated in the other place. As such, we can only conclude that Canadians elected this government with full knowledge of the intent of the bill and the fact that it would be introduced again in a new Parliament. Consequently, as senators, we can closely review the bill, propose changes and amendments, hear from experts and witnesses and we can express our concerns, as we have been doing. However, we can’t act in a way that would cause this bill to be defeated or die again on the Order Paper by way of dilatory tactics.

The Salisbury Convention is a guide, a reminder to show restraint in front of the will of an elected house in our bicameral Westminster system of Parliament.

I’m surprised when I hear senators who are usually so keen to defend the virtues of the classic Westminster system suddenly ignore one of its guiding conventions because it suits the partisan interests of the day.

Colleagues, it is with regret that I have to say that this time allocation motion is justified and even forced upon us under the circumstances. It is proposed today not by the choice of the government but because of the abuse of delaying tactics coming up to this point.

While time allocation is used to limit debate, no one can seriously argue that Bill C-11 and Bill C-10, for that matter, were not debated enough. In the previous Parliament, Bill C-10 was debated on eight different days at the other place from November 2020 to June 2021. In committee, it was studied for 62 hours and a total of 142 witnesses were heard. Its successor, Bill C-11, had even more scrutiny as it was debated on the other side of the Hill for 10 days from February 2022 to June 2022, 80 witnesses were heard and over 100 amendments were discussed and considered.

In the Senate, our Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications had 31 meetings for 67 hours and 30 minutes; 64 amendments were discussed and 26 were adopted.

In the chamber, we debated this bill at six different sittings between June 2022 and February 2023.

What else is there to say? The following: The notion that Bill C-11 is unpopular or unwanted by the Canadian public is false. It is, in fact, quite the contrary. Polls have shown that a majority of Canadians support Bill C-11 and its objective to regulate broadcasting on the internet. One of the polls, commissioned by The Globe and Mail last year, found that 63% of Canadians supported this push to regulate internet content, while only 37% were opposed to it. And by that I don’t mean that 37% of Canadians do not need to be heard, but I do believe they have been heard. This is particularly true in my home province of Quebec, where an overwhelming majority of stakeholders and artists are eagerly awaiting Royal Assent for Bill C-11.

Now let me take a moment to talk to you about our group and the rigorous work we did at the Independent Senators Group with this piece of legislation. I would like to thank particularly our members who have worked tirelessly to improve the bill at the Transport Committee: Senators Clement; Cormier; Dasko; Miville-Dechêne, the deputy chair; Simons; Sorensen and the others from all groups who have studied it and expressed themselves in the chamber. You have done so well maintaining an independent and critical mindset and voting according to your conscience and own personal opinions. I can say proudly that you have fulfilled the work expected of us as senators. Throughout this study, we at the ISG have always shown willingness to scrutinize the contents of the bill, resulting in what I believe to be a comprehensive study.

Not one witness wishing to testify before the committee was turned down. None of the debate was cut short, numerous amendments were presented and a good number of them were included in the final form of this bill. This resulted in better legislation for the benefit of Canadians: A total of 64 amendments were proposed, and 20 out of 26 amendments were adopted at the House of Commons.

On a less positive note, colleagues, while many senators were working to improve Bill C-11, some colleagues had different objectives. What exactly is at play here? Let me be clear: I have no doubt they are acting in good faith, truly believing that this bill is bad and that it should be defeated by any means. However, colleagues, although we would have liked all our amendments to be adopted by the other place and the government, it is time to move forward. The forced time allocation motion being debated today is the only way to break the deadlock and move on the adoption of the message we received beyond the pace of a turtle slowly going from one one-hour bell to another.

Let’s now speak about democracy. First and foremost, we are here to protect democracy. We are not elected representatives. Every one of us is well aware of this fact. We are, however, members of an institution of sober second thought — a thoughtful, reflective partner to the elected chamber. We are still very much a part of the parliamentary system of Canadian democracy.

At the base of every democratic system is the concept of a vote. This is what we are being asked to do by the other place — vote.

Good evening, Senator Plett.

Now, some colleagues know that they will lose a free and democratic vote in this chamber. We have already adopted a version of this bill at third reading, and the odds are that if we were to take a vote on this message, Bill C-11 would most probably be heading toward Royal Assent. These senators are doing everything in their power to prevent a vote. Is it really democracy to promote disinformation and demagogy with incendiary remarks while refusing to proceed to a vote? I know my language will shock some of my esteemed colleagues, but I must say it clearly for the record and for Canadians watching this debate. Bill C-11 is not an attack on free speech or freedom of opinion. Let’s not fall prey to demagogic attacks.

At third reading in this chamber, it was said that Bill C-11 would bring us back to the age of Cicero — a dangerous time where free thinkers would pay for their dissidence to a regime with the loss of limbs. I, rather, see Bill C-11 as a step into the 21st century and a new age of communication and broadcasting. I see it as a way for our Canadian artists and creators to shine and to be promoted fairly. I see it as long overdue.

So if dilatory tactics and demagogic fear mongering can impede a vote on a message from an elected house, are we as senators fulfilling our democratic role? Do we really believe that this is the way to restore the credibility of the Senate? Is this what is expected of us as non-elected parliamentarians, to delay legislation adopted by the representatives of the people?

As we say in French, to ask the question is to answer it.

The answer is obvious: Of course not.

Colleagues, if we don’t limit debate today to ensure that a vote is held, I’m afraid we might never get the chance to fulfill our duty as parliamentarians and vote on this message. This would be a great disservice to democracy.

In conclusion, today we’re asking that a vote be held. We’re asking that there be respect for parliamentary democracy, that a vote be held completely free of limits on debate, and also that there be a vote on the message from the House of Commons so that a decision is made about the future of Bill C-11.

I began my speech by highlighting the exceptional nature of this motion and its forced nature. In my view, limiting parliamentary debate must remain an exception.

However, I reiterate that the circumstances forced the representative of the government, a democratically elected government, to use this draconian option that is found in our parliamentary rules. Now the time has come to conclude the debate on the response of the government and of the chamber of elected members to the amendments to Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act, that we proposed to them, and to continue our work on other legislation while looking to the future.

Thank you. Meegwetch.

Would Senator Saint-Germain take a question?

Of course.

Thank you, senator.

I listened to the story being told by Senator Saint-Germain and even earlier by Senator Gold about how, “Thank God for the ISG — the Independent Senators Group — that we had such robust witnesses come before the committee; we had so many witnesses; we had so many meetings; we had so many amendments,” and so on and so forth.

But the truth of the matter, colleagues, is at the end of the day, if it wasn’t for our filibuster, if it wasn’t for our fighting at every turn at committee and in this chamber, we would have had a vote. If I would have listened to my colleague and the very capable deputy chair, we would have had a vote on this bill a year ago, because it was so urgent to pass.

I was asked every month —

Senator Housakos, do you have a question?

Of course I have a question. I wouldn’t get up on my feet without having a question.

Senator Saint-Germain, at the end of the day, we’ve had many instances as a chamber where we put forward amendments, and the amendments put forward — that we supported as well — by your colleagues in your committee were watered-down amendments to protect user-generated content compared to the ones that were defeated.

So my question is: Why wouldn’t the Senate just insist one more time to the government to listen to those — as you pointed out — thousands of user-generated content creators and witnesses and tell the government that we insist on these reasonable amendments as proposed by the ISG senators and supported at committee by all of us and tell the government it is in the interest of the voices of reason in the country that they support those amendments?

Thank you, Senator Housakos, for this question. This is a good question, and I would concur with you that we at the Senate have done thoughtful work.

I had the opportunity to say that no witnesses were denied the opportunity to be heard by the Transport and Communications Committee. Congratulations to all members of this committee.

At the same time, we need to listen to the witnesses and interpret their testimonies for what they were. We realized that all across the country, industry, artists and many stakeholders were in agreement with the bill, especially with some amendments that the committee listened to and this chamber listened to. But at the same time, at the end of the day — and I would refer to the Westminster convention and to our parliamentary system — we did our work and we presented the amendments to the government. Of 26 amendments, 20 were agreed to, and at the end of the day, if you do not agree to defer to the other place and to the government, you have a decision to make, and this decision is for you to be a candidate at the next election.

Honourable senators, I will take a brief time to join in the debate this evening on Senator Gold’s time allocation motion. To be clear from the outset, I speak for myself, not on behalf of the members of my group. Our members are free to vote as they see fit, but I will be supporting the motion.

While it will seem for many in the Senate like this is new, it really is not. I’ve been in this chamber long enough to have seen both sides of this debate. For example, in 2014, when my friend, the Leader of the Opposition, stated:

I would like to say that in fact time allocation opens debate. We are now debating. We are debating time allocation. We will debate the motion. In fact, adjourning debate is stifling debate.

That, of course, was when Stephen Harper was Prime Minister.

I have argued in the past against time allocation and the frequency of time allocation, particularly under the previous government. Senator Gold spoke in his speech about the frequency. I would have preferred an agreement, as I’m sure we all would have, that allowed everyone to have their piece, and then we voted. Since that option is not available, I have to consider all the factors in this particular situation before us. I’ve also considered that this is the first time that time allocation has been brought forward by the Senate leader, Senator Gold.

Senator Harder gave notice of time allocation, but it was withdrawn before it came up for debate. Unlike previous time allocations — and there were certainly a lot of them — this is not a stage for substantive debate on the legislation. In fact, it is a debate on time allocation.

Honourable senators, we’re now debating a motion to accept the message from the other place. Considerable time and effort has gone into weighing the merits of this legislation, both in the chamber and in committee hearings. As others have said, the Transport and Communications Committee — and I’m taking these statistics from Senator Housakos’s own speech on the committee report — held 31 meetings in total and heard from 138 witnesses. They received 67 briefs. In total, the committee met for nearly 68 hours. Clause-by-clause consideration lasted nine meetings. Committee members considered 73 amendments, and 26 were adopted. Certainly, there were a lot of witnesses and lots of time for questions and lots of debate at the committee and in this chamber.

Our former colleague Senator Dawson was tasked with shepherding this bill through the Senate and did a fine job of seeing Bill C-11 to the end of third reading in this chamber, and we, as senators, have done our due diligence and sent our amendments to the other place. Most were accepted and some were rejected. Two were amended, and then in the natural way of things in the past, the Senate defers to the elected members in the other place.

For those saying that we have not yet had time to debate the message received from the House of Commons, I would disagree. We have spent far less time debating in far more complicated circumstances. When Bill C-69 passed through this chamber, it was just as contentious, as some of you may recall. There, as noted by our former colleague Grant Mitchell in his speech about the message on June 17, 2019, the government “accepted 62 amendments outright and another 37 with some modification for a total of 99.”

One other senator spoke that day and it was adjourned. On June 20, debate resumed with one and a half hours of speeches, a 15-minute bell and a vote. That was it. In the end, this chamber accepted the will of the elected members in the other place and did not insist on its remaining amendments, all in less time than we will be debating this time allocation motion.

If Senator Gold’s motion passes, I would argue that we can easily complete our deliberations on this message in the six hours ahead. I would be surprised, actually, if that time period is filled.

Our right to speak is not being curtailed in any tangible way. I am very comfortable with this path forward today. I consider time allocation in this instance an acceptable solution, and I will be voting for the motion to be adopted. Thank you.

Thank you, colleagues. I echo all the words that were expressed so eloquently by Senator Wallin. None of us are taking positions based on partisan politics; we’re taking positions in defence of Canadians. I have said that throughout the course of the debate on Bill C-11. I have not hidden my intentions in regard to Bill C-11, protecting freedom of speech and protecting what Canadian digital-first creators can post and view on the internet. I would rather be having a debate on the content of the bill this evening, as I’ve had throughout every process, instead of having a discussion on time allocation with a government leader who has professed to not be a government leader but a government representative.

Throughout the process, he has said that he doesn’t represent the government, that he’s just an independent — you’ve said this on a number of occasions. You have a shocked look every time I say that you have denied being a partisan government leader; that you are a representative of the government and you don’t represent the Liberal Party of Canada in this chamber. You have said that. You have said you’re not the government leader, yet now we have you calling for time allocation by using a rule that only a leader of a Liberal caucus governing party in the chamber should be using.

Now, to be clear, because I want to be specific on this particular motion, I don’t oppose it. I think it’s a wonderful tool. I said it when I was the Speaker in the past, and I said it when I was a member of a majority governing caucus — many of you are not members of a majority governing caucus, but in a very lucid way you’re all supporters of this Liberal government. You show it with your rhetoric and your speeches and, most importantly, you show it with your voting pattern. There is nothing wrong with that.

Back to the point that Senator Plett and many of us have been trying to make throughout the evening, we’re okay with the government saying they’re the government. We’re okay with Liberals saying they’re Liberals. It’s not an insult. I know these days it’s a little bit tough to acknowledge that you’re a Liberal, but at the end of the day, it’s a party that has had a long history in this country. I don’t see why we have this peekaboo process that we’re going through and this smoke and mirrors of saying, “We’re not one day but we are another day.” At the end of the day, when Canadians are going to judge you, they judge you on your vote. That’s a reality, government leader, and we can’t deny it.

There’s always frustration when we bring it up. I think the most important part of our work here is to be transparent and accountable to the Canadian public; to say where you stand on issues and vote clearly.

We’ve been transparent. Bill C-11 is a terrible bill, and when we get the time allocation — unfortunately, we’ll have a short period of time — we will again express clearly why it’s such a terrible bill. We’ve had witnesses and testimonies about what a terrible bill it is. I understand the government doesn’t want to talk about it because the government wants to make sure that bills like these that are not popular get swept under the rug and get moved along as quickly as possible. That’s when governments use time allocation.

Senator Saint-Germain, the truth of the matter is you use the word “democracy.” Democracy in this chamber is not about voting. I hate to break it to you. If you look at the last two or three elections, this chamber represented the democratic makeup in none of those elections. In 2015, there was an overwhelming majority Liberal government, and this chamber did not represent that reality for a few years. It still functioned to the best of our ability because of compromises of the opposition. In 2019, there was a minority Liberal government. In 2021, this current government won with 32% of the vote, the lowest percentage in the history of the country. So, this chamber, with 75% appointed senators from the governing party, do you think every vote we take on government legislation represents democracy? Please. It represents the will of the government.

That’s one important aspect of the Senate. They appoint a government leader to make sure the legislation moves along, as well as a deputy government leader, now modelled as a legislative — I don’t know what the title is. But we know one thing: You are ex officio. You come to committees, at clause-by-clause consideration, and you defend the government position. And you do it very well, Senator Gold. There is nothing wrong with that. Just like most of the senators whom Prime Minister Trudeau has appointed feel an obligation to support his agenda — and I believe most of you feel compelled as well because you share those political values. But democracy, Senator Saint-Germain, in this chamber, is expressed in debate, not by voting. Voting is just one small element where the government, at the end of the day, wins the day regardless of the numbers. But it’s in debate that democracy happens.

I learned that the hard way because in 2008, when I was brought here, I was sitting in a majority Conservative caucus, like many of you are right now, appointed by a prime minister, and there are many of you with the same view of the world. I was very frustrated for a few years with Senator Mercer, Senator Dawson and Senator Fraser, and I kept asking myself how come they only have 30% of the house here and they’re telling us what we have to do and what we can’t do. We’re the government. Let’s have a vote. Enough. Let’s move on. That’s not democracy.

I learned over time by speaking to guys like senator Lowell Murray and senator Serge Joyal — have you ever heard of them? They were giants of parliamentary democracy and they explained to me, “You know what, senator? I know you’re up there in the third row, and there are 60 Conservatives, and you’re fed up, but we’re articulating on behalf of stakeholders, Canadians and, more importantly, we recognize the principle in democracy that power corrupts, but absolute powers corrupts absolutely.”

It is, of course, natural for Prime Minister Trudeau to be sitting in Langevin Block, as did Prime Minister Harper back in 2014, and ask, “Why are those guys delaying my stuff over there? Giddy up. Let’s get on with it.” But you know why they were delaying things back then? It doesn’t matter if it was bills like Bill C-377, on which you referred to my ruling when I was Speaker, or stuff that we’re doing here on behalf of stakeholders. We’re talking on behalf of millions of Canadians who come and express themselves. If there’s any value in this institution, it’s when every day of the week there are a few hundred or a few thousand Canadians who think that there are people in here advocating for them.

You don’t measure that. The barometer for that kind of democracy isn’t because you have 70 votes, Senator Gold. We might have 15 votes, but we represent millions of voices. So the argument about how we need to get on with democracy — democracy comes in many forms, particularly in an unelected chamber. I remind everybody that we are on very thin ice with the Canadian public and have been for a long time because they always question the value of this institution.

Bill C-11 is one of those bills that we cannot pretend there was consensus on. We cannot pretend there was clarity. To this day, there is a lot of uncertainty, and this place has an obligation, not on a partisan basis — yes, Senator Gold, the other place is a hyper-partisan place, but it’s incumbent on us to not be hyper‑partisan. I know you feel we are because we keep insisting that the government listens to reason, but we’re not doing it because Pierre Poilievre asked us to. We did it because of the thousands of people I meet on a daily basis.

I’m going to Toronto this weekend. I’m doing round tables on Bill C-11. I invite you to come with me and meet the groups of Canadians. These are not card-carrying members of the Conservative Party. They are young Canadians concerned about expression, freedom of speech, what we’re going do with algorithms, how they’re going to be manipulating the platforms they’re using to communicate, why all of this is being done, and the cost and impact it will have, and we’ll have those debates in the few hours you’ve allocated for us this week.

Colleagues, another element here that’s important is that every time the government leader rises and speaks, he uses words to refer to the Trudeau government as “curative” and “progressive.” Maybe you don’t even realize you’re doing this, but when you were referring in your remarks earlier, you were talking about the action of the Trudeau government as curative, as doing God’s work, essentially, on Bill C-11, and we need to carry on. I invite you to go back and listen to it. In the same breath, you were talking about how the opposition was obstructive and abusive of our powers.

If that’s the starting point of a fair and open debate in an institution like this — when the government is calling us abusive, when the government is saying that we’re obstructionist and we’re partisan — those are the terminologies you’re using in your allocation when you’re speaking to us. Yet the government is curative and wonderful, and we’re obstructing democracy in its finest form. That’s when the frustration builds. This is the kind of discussion we spend more time on than we do on the actual content of the bill, government leader. This is where, of course, frustration kicks in.

I just want to reiterate that I don’t have a problem with the premise of the motion as long as it’s done in an honest and transparent way. Register as a government leader. Build your government caucus. You only need nine; I think you’ll find nine people who will admit they’re Liberal. Thank you.

Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to the time allocation motion for Bill C-11. This is, to say the least, an extraordinary day in the chamber, and yet, in some ways, more of the same.

I will start by saying that I support the motion. Our Conservative colleagues — and they are our colleagues — have once again laid out just about everything that they don’t like about an independent Senate. And it has also become more evident as the day has gone by that our Conservative colleagues would have been happy to see the demise of this bill. I certainly don’t feel the same way.

“We should have changed the Rules,” as we were told earlier today. Well, we gave that a try, and we faced a barrage of obstacles. That’s probably to be expected because our Conservative friends found every possible way to shut that down at the Rules Committee. They like the world just the way that it is, and I understand that — that sort of goes with being Conservative and change-resistant.

Our Conservative colleagues made the case that the Government Representative in the Senate did not have the power to move time allocation because he’s a non-affiliated senator; he’s not a member of a political party. They would have preferred to see a Government Representative Office, or GRO, with no powers, while conveniently retaining all the powers that they have to delay. That would be very convenient, indeed, wouldn’t it? That is what we have heard today.

Not surprisingly, our Conservative colleagues are no strangers to time allocation, and we’ve heard that already. It was first adopted in the Senate in 1991. Since then, it has been used 68 times. During the Forty-first Parliament, under the previous Conservative government, notice of motion for time allocation was given 24 times in the Senate. On two of those occasions, the notice was withdrawn. Therefore, time allocation was used 22 times by Conservative senators during the Forty-first Parliament.

Senator Gold has noted some of the more aggressive and fast-tracked Conservative time allocation motions — and it was on some quite important bills: Some of the bills in question included Bill C-23, the Fair Elections Act, which made sweeping changes to the Canada Elections Act; and Bill C-51, the Anti-terrorism Act, 2015, which expanded state powers, policing and national security powers, while undermining civil liberties and democratic rights. Both bills received Charter challenges after their swift passage.

This was business as usual for our Conservative colleagues. So I find it a little bit rich that our colleagues have seen the light, temporarily at least, in accusing the government of shutting down debate on a bill which, as we’ve heard already, has been before Parliament for two years, has been addressed by 142 witnesses and has had significant time for debate and deliberation — and which was an electoral promise in the last election. It is our duty as senators to ensure that the bill can reach a final vote.

This is the first time in seven years, obviously, that the Government Representative has invoked time allocation. We’ve heard that this followed many attempts to come to an agreement, to negotiate and to move the bill to a final vote. Time allocation is not what any of us would have wished for, but, after a significant amount of review, the Government Representative obviously decided, as is his right, that there is interest in moving this to a vote using the tool he has at his disposal: time allocation. We know, and the Speaker has confirmed tonight, that this is eligible in the Rules.

We have heard that Bill C-11 is the most debated piece of legislation in Canadian history. Consequently, none of us can reasonably say that we haven’t had enough time to study the bill. Our colleagues in the chamber have spoken at length about the clear objectives of the bill, as well as the very technical details in which this legislation will create new regulatory requirements for Canada’s legacy broadcasters and online social media platforms. We have learned, colleagues, all that we are going to learn, and it’s time to bring the bill to a final vote.

Balancing rules is obviously important in any context but, among other things, some rules have established an unproductive and conflict-based Senate in which the ability of the official opposition to endlessly delay the progress of bills — through the use of adjournments — is theoretically offset by the government’s ability to time allocate, while cutting short debates on bills. At their very worst, our current Rules permit a single senator to delay and frustrate proposed legislation for months and — as we’ve seen in some cases — years by depriving the Senate from even voting on it. We’ve seen many examples of that.

Tonight, it’s clear once again that Senate Conservatives have been unhappy about the shift to a more independent and less partisan Senate from the outset. It’s no surprise, is it?

Tonight, we heard that Senator Plett — I’m glad that you find this so amusing — is still lamenting the loss of the “take turns in power” duopoly. We had to argue, and we had to negotiate — when we came here as independent senators — for office space, for resources, for committee seats and, in the longer term, for more equity in the complex world of rules in this place. Nothing came easy, so spare us the advice to “Just go and change the Rules if you don’t like them.”

It doesn’t end there, does it? We also entered a Senate still reeling from a scathing Auditor General’s report on spending scandals, ethics issues, a Senate Administration leadership structure without a single point of accountability and a dark cloud of sexual harassment. That’s the context that we walked into.

Independent senators tackled these long-standing, long-ignored issues one at a time. The long-delayed recommendation on an independent audit function has been addressed. We fought hard and achieved support for a much stronger workplace harassment policy in the face of considerable delay and opposition. We have a Senate that is healthier and more efficient.

So, colleagues, while some in this place lament the old duopoly, they obviously feel comfortable with the same old hard‑nosed politics. By the way, I don’t believe for a moment that in the last few years of the Stephen Harper government, it was a golden time of sweetness and light for the Liberal opposition in this place. That’s fair enough, I think.

Let me conclude by saying that, like other independent senators, I’m grateful that I don’t have to take instructions from Pierre Poilievre, as I do not have to take instructions from Justin Trudeau. I would not have it any other way. I’m working with my colleagues in this place to do the best job I can for Canadians, bringing a policy-based approach to our work as opposed to a political one.

My final note is that I have a great deal of respect for my colleagues in every caucus and group in this place. We can do great things together if we work more effectively and more efficiently together.

The us-versus-them nature of some remarks that we have heard over the last months and years — and that we have heard this evening — tells me that we have some way to go in achieving this, but I still believe it’s worth our work. Thank you, colleagues.

Would Senator Dean take a question?

No.

He’s afraid.

Honourable senators, I rise to speak to the motion to allocate time for the consideration of the motion, as amended, to respond to the message from the House of Commons regarding Bill C-11. First of all, I’m very impressed by the senators’ eloquent debate.

I intend to vote in favour of this motion to allocate time. This is a historic day on the road to modernizing the Senate, to making it a less partisan Senate. I will say a little more later to address some of the comments made by my Conservative colleagues.

Today we have, in a sense, broken a glass ceiling in our process of modernizing the Senate. We’re voting on a motion to allocate time in the context of a Senate with four groups plus the Government Representative. This is an entirely new situation. In the past, time allocation motions were passed with only two groups in the Senate, the Conservatives and the Liberals. One of the two parties always had a majority, so the time allocation motion was passed in order to speed up the debate.

At that time, both caucuses were affiliated with their party; they had party meetings. The government’s goal was to try to get their bills passed here, or studied, but fairly quickly. Now, with several groups, it is impossible to move as quickly. It’s not easy for a government to impose its will. I think that’s the difference between the Senate of today and the Senate of yesterday. In the Senate of the 41st Parliament and prior, because the government often held a majority in both Houses, it could impose its will. The only way for the opposition party to make its point was to use delay tactics, and the time allocation motion was there to prevent those delay tactics.

In today’s environment, everything has changed, and I think as long as there are groups in the Senate that are using strategies together with their colleagues in the other place, there is a very real possibility that stalling tactics will be used. Chapter 7, which deals with time allocation motions, is an eminently important tool to deal with this issue of delay tactics that are so frustrating because they prevent debate, they prevent us from playing our role as a chamber of sober second thought, and they also keep us from voting.

Today, with the Speaker’s ruling, which was supported by everyone, we have shattered a glass ceiling. This doesn’t mean that we will use this practice often. I don’t believe that the Government Representative in the Senate and his small team are interested in doing so, because it won’t necessarily work given the number of groups. Therefore, the motion for time allocation without agreement will be used when there are delay tactics.

However, if all groups work to truly exercise their role of sober second thought, perhaps one day we won’t use rule 7-2, but rule 7-1, time allocation with agreement to indicate that there’s been sufficient debate. As there are no limits, we will be able to take the time needed. Our imaginations will ensure that we have orderly debates, such as those on medical assistance in dying, the bill to legalize cannabis and other bills.

The intent of my intervention is simply to highlight this point, especially for new senators who are perhaps wondering what they have gotten themselves into. I believe that today is an important day, but I don’t believe that this practice will be used often.

Therefore, I will be voting in favour of the motion. Thank you.

I’d like to say just a few words, given the late hour, to clarify some things. The first is that much is being made of the fact that this is the first time a time allocation motion is being used since the Trudeau government came to power. I would point out that the reason is simple: It’s because the Rules don’t allow it. That’s why there hasn’t been a time allocation motion before now, simply because the Rules are quite clear on the matter. I understand that Senator Gold used some manœuvre today to move a motion, but the fact remains that the Rules are very clear.

Second, much has also been made of using time allocation for bills. We are at the response to a message from the House of commons stage, a stage that couldn’t be more final for a bill — something we rarely see in fact. It has rarely happened that a message is sent to the House of Commons with amendments, only to have it returned to the Senate, followed by a reply.

If memory serves me, I’ve never seen a time allocation motion used at the response to a message from the House of Commons stage. At times rule 7-1 has been invoked on a bill, on amendments or at various reading stages, but I’ve never seen it used on a message from the Commons.

That is rather disappointing because this debate was going fairly well, beyond the matter of whether we took too much time or too little. Senator Gold mentioned that he’d reached an agreement with the leaders and that the bill had to be passed before the 10th or 11th, but that didn’t happen.

That’s fortunate, actually, because the debate continued and amendments were proposed by the other group. I no longer know what to call it because there are many groups with different names. Sometimes I get mixed up, but they all have colours that resemble the Senate chamber. These amendments were adopted and sent to the other place, and most of them were accepted. The debate was therefore not in vain. The fact that it went beyond the initial deadline set out by the government leader made it possible to continue the debate and propose amendments that were accepted by the House of Commons.

Although I don’t agree with the fact that senators were able to propose other amendments, the debate was still conducted properly and that led to improvements to the bill. What’s more, even though I think that the bill needed more amendments, the fact remains that a consensus will be reached by a vote. I’m sad that this is happening at the very end of this process. We’re at the message stage. Everything was going well. We had some success. Not me as a Conservative, because I obviously don’t agree with everything in the bill, but at least the process was complete, it was carried out in a respectful way, and we were able to make some improvements to the bill, many of which were accepted by the House of Commons. Now we’re at the very end of the process and we’re tripping at the finish line. We stopped running. The race stops here. I think that is a disgraceful end to a process that was nevertheless done by the book.

Senator Bellemare spoke of delay tactics. I invite you to read Serge Joyal’s book on the Senate. The Senate’s power to pass a time allocation motion is an important act to ensure fulsome debate within the context of the process that takes place here in this chamber.

I find it unfortunate that we’re ending this whole process with time allocation on a bill that’s specifically related to freedom of expression, especially when we were just days away from wrapping up debate. It’s also unfortunate that the Leader of the Government is using a time allocation motion to respond to a message to the House of Commons. I find that sad, and it’s the first time I’ve seen a time allocation motion at this stage. I don’t think it was the right time to set this precedent.

Again, Your Honour, I think we have to be respectful of the rules and respectful of each other, but this is a disappointing end to what has been an exemplary process up to this point.

Honourable senators, I rise tonight at this late hour not to offer any new groundbreaking analysis on this well-debated topic of time allocation, but simply to join other colleagues in offering my opinion.

This has been a contentious and at times heated debate, as has been the case with Bill C-11, generally. While there is much disagreement about the use of time allocation, it is clear that all senators in this chamber are acting in what they believe to be the best interest of Canadians.

I support the motion. I do not agree with the argument that the government is stifling debate, because the facts simply do not support that assertion. Colleagues, the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications has done extraordinary work in studying Bill C-11, both in comprehensiveness and length. In the Senate alone, along with a pre-study of Bill C-11 that began on May 31 of last year, Transport and Communications held 31 meetings on the bill from the time it began its study on October 25, 2022. It heard from 138 witnesses over the course of 67.5 hours of meeting time. Beyond this incredible number of witnesses who appeared before the committee, it received another 67 written submissions. Of the 31 meetings held, 9 were just for clause-by-clause consideration, which began on November 23 of last year.

During clause-by-clause consideration, 73 amendments were proposed, 26 of these 73 proposals were adopted to a total of 11 different clauses. There were 13 subamendments proposed, of which 2 were adopted, along with 8 recorded votes.

Let us all spare a thought for the fortitude of the procedural clerks and other committee staff who handled all of that. Colleagues, those statistics do not even take into account the eight days overall during which debate occurred on the messages between the Senate and the House of Commons between February 2 and April 19 of this year.

There is also, of course, the work of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. That committee heard from 80 witnesses in 32 hours over 12 meetings from the time it began its study on May 24, 2022, and debated approximately 100 amendments in its three clause-by-clause sessions, which began on June 14 of last year. It also received 52 written submissions. That, colleagues, is just Bill C-11.

Of course, there was also a full study done on Bill C-11’s predecessor in the last Parliament, then Bill C-10, at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, and the Senate began second-reading debate before the dissolution of the Forty-third Parliament.

The Senate has spent more time on Bill C-11 — everyone has said this — than it has on any other piece of legislation in its 156-year history.

Honestly, colleagues, what more is there to say? The Senate, especially the members of the Committee on Transport and Communications, has more than done its work. The committee listened and debated, and so has the Senate. To argue that the government is crushing debate is simply not true.

This is the first time this government has invoked time allocation in the Senate since the start of the Forty-second Parliament in December 2015, nearly seven and a half years ago. In the Forty-first Parliament, however, under the previous government, time allocation was invoked 21 times in less than four years. It seems that support for time allocation depends on where you sit in the chamber.

I will close by reiterating again, colleagues, that time allocation is appropriate in this situation, where the bill in question has been so thoroughly and exhaustively debated, with its principle being debated over two different Parliaments. There is nothing left to say on this bill that has not already been said many times. I thank you, colleagues.

Senator Carignan, do you have a question?

Yes.

No, thank you, Senator Carignan.

That’s not up to your—

Honourable senators, I rise today to speak on the government’s motion to invoke time allocation on the Senate’s debate on the message from the House of Commons on Bill C-11. As you have heard throughout this debate, the Senate’s amendments on Bill C-11 were the product of an intensive committee study process. The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications heard nearly 70 hours of testimony from 140 witnesses, with 67 additional written submissions on this topic. The committee studied this issue tirelessly.

Since we received the message, the product of that committee study, back from the House of Commons, we’ve debated for only six hours before Senator Gold gave notice of the government’s intent to invoke time allocation. The Senate government leaders, first Senator Harder and now Senator Gold, have boasted for years about this government’s disdain for invoking time allocation and the lack of necessity for them to ever employ it. So why is the government choosing to invoke time allocation now?

After almost eight years of governing, it is appalling that the Trudeau government is choosing to impose time allocation in the Senate for the first time on Bill C-11, of all bills. With this move, the Trudeau government is censoring debate on a censorship bill.

The irony is not lost on Canadians, honourable senators. Canadians have lost a lot of trust in this Trudeau government as this legislation has worked its way through Parliament. The backlash from Canadians has been fast and furious, as citizens, and especially young people, resent the government’s attempt to interfere with the content Canadians can access and produce online.

Honourable senators, I know your email inboxes and telephone voice mail are just like mine: overflowing with emails and phone calls from Canadians opposed to Bill C-11. It is sometimes overwhelming, but it is indicative of the fact that many Canadians understand that their freedom of access to information and their freedom of expression are at risk with this legislation. People, especially young people, routinely stop me to register their opposition on this bill, not only Conservative-leaning people but also lots of people who have previously voted for the Trudeau government, as well as those who haven’t ever been engaged in politics before.

Canada’s domestic online content producers — musicians, artists and influencers — are largely united against this bill because of the negative implications this bill has in limiting their reach online and, in turn, curtailing their livelihoods.

Time allocation is one of the most political parliamentary procedures. Many senators in this chamber assert themselves as independent and devoid of partisan affiliation, but they will ultimately turn and vote for the use of the legislative guillotine on Bill C-11 simply to support this Trudeau government.

Honourable senators, don’t be fooled. Time allocation is just the government’s very blunt tool to cut short debate and force their agenda through Parliament.

In this place, one of our roles as senators is to safeguard and preserve the rights and interests of minorities that may be overrun in a House of Commons elected by representation by population. How is invoking time allocation in accordance with that aspiration, honourable senators? I submit that it runs roughshod over the very minority interests senators are sworn to protect.

Why is the Trudeau government pushing so hard to see that Bill C-11 passes both houses of Parliament as soon as possible? The timing is perhaps curious, but not difficult to understand. Canada is in the midst of a national affordability crisis, where Canadians are finding it difficult to secure the very necessities of life, like a roof over their heads and food on their tables. Meanwhile, the Trudeau government has increased the cost of bureaucracy by 50%, yet finds itself embroiled in the biggest public service strike in Canada’s history, something that could only be accomplished by the most incompetent money managers in the Trudeau government.

Once Bill C-11 is passed, I suspect the Trudeau government will move to prorogue Parliament soon in an attempt to lower the heat and distract from its many scandals — and they’re really dodging quite a few scandals, honourable senators.

First and foremost, of course, is the alleged Beijing election interference scandal that continues to dog Prime Minister Trudeau, following him like a bad stench. Tied into that is the mess that his family’s Trudeau Foundation has devolved into. We’re told one day that the Prime Minister hasn’t been involved with the Trudeau Foundation for ten years, even though his brother signed the agreement for a questionable donation that points right back to the Chinese Communist government. In fact, you might even be tempted to give the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt, until you open the newspaper and discover his office hosted a meeting of the Trudeau Foundation and senior government officials right within the confines of his Prime Minister’s Office.

Every day seems to bring more bad news for this Prime Minister, and we know that answering for his behaviour is not high on the list of his list of priorities. Prorogation has the advantage of keeping the Prime Minister well away from a pesky and intrusive opposition and media questions on Parliament Hill. Instead, he can hide away out of view, waiting until his Special Rapporteur magically reveals, just before the May long weekend, that — surprise — there is no need for a public inquiry into Beijing election interference, leaving the Prime Minister free to go to as many $9,000-a-night luxury beach villas as he wants. Surf’s up.

Meanwhile, with Bill C-11 rammed through Parliament, the long arm of the Trudeau government will have the ability to manipulate and influence the information Canadians see and produce online, just in time for another election. How fortuitous.

Honourable senators, you don’t have to provide Prime Minister Trudeau with political cover by passing this legislation. Our Senate produced 26 very solid and reasonable amendments to Bill C-11 after weeks of careful study, research and witness testimony. What did the Liberal-NDP majority in the House of Commons do with them? Sure, they accepted 20 of the 26 amendments, which sounds like a win, until you look closer and discover that they rejected some of the most substantive amendments. That included the most important amendment on exempting user-generated content, proposed by two Trudeau‑appointed senators, Senator Miville-Dechêne and Senator Simons, from the largest group in the Senate.

The Trudeau government passed the amended bill back to the Senate, and now it is once again our choice to make. The government still refuses to protect user-generated content in the actual legislation, instead insisting that appending such a promise in the wording of the motion will suffice. The motion reads:

That the Senate take note of the Government of Canada’s public assurance that Bill C-11 will not apply to user‑generated digital content and its commitment to issue policy direction to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission accordingly . . .

Honourable senators, I wasn’t born yesterday. I’ve seen Prime Minister Trudeau’s Liberal promises come and go. Do you remember electoral reform, 2 billion trees, clean drinking water on all reserves and a carbon tax capped at $50 per tonne? It’s funny how those promises just vaporized into the ether. This one will too.

The Trudeau government wants senators and, by extension, Canadians to just trust them, kind of like how the Senate government leader consulted with our leader before declaring a failed agreement and moving time allocation — that kind of trust? There is no reason to think that this Liberal promise will hold up any better than any of the many other broken Liberal promises.

The Liberals forced this message through the House of Commons side and now they are forcing it through the Senate with this imposition of time allocation. Honourable senators, here is your chance to prove your independence. We have the opportunity and the obligation to push back for the benefit of all Canadians who value freedom of thought and expression. If those of you who were appointed by Prime Minister Trudeau vote with the government to shut down debate, consider that to be the last vestige of the independent Trudeau Senate. You hold the majority here, so you decide. Here is hoping you choose wisely. Thank you.

Do you wish to speak or ask a question, Senator Audette?

I’d like to ask Senator Batters a question.

You have one minute.

With pleasure. I’m very tired. Senator Batters? No? Okay. That’s democracy for you.

Honourable senators, I’ve listened very carefully to the discussion tonight. It has ranged from a clear discussion of the merits of using time allocation at this point in time into discussions about reform of the Senate, where we’re headed or where we should be headed. There is no doubt there is a lot of disagreement in this chamber still. I live in hope that we will continue to have these discussions and perhaps come to a point where we can see a road forward together.

One of the things I would like to say about the speeches I’ve heard tonight is that there isn’t one of them with which I didn’t agree with some elements of what people said. I also disagreed with some elements of what people said.

One of the things that makes it difficult for me with my particular temperament and not being able to keep quiet when Senator Plett says certain things — of course, he can’t keep quiet when I say certain things either; it’s good across the floor — is when a position of the meritorious behaviour of the opposition is put forward as only speaking on behalf of Canadians. We all speak on behalf of Canadians. There are Canadians who have polarized views on this particular piece of legislation before us, as there is on others.

This is on both sides; I include this for the GRO — the Government Representative Office — as well as for the opposition: There isn’t a monopoly on representing what Canadians think. There are tons of scorn heaped upon us from people opposite who say that we’re not independent and put a partisan label on us. That would suit their purposes in terms of their concerns about a loss of official opposition status in a reformed Senate. We understand that those are the things at stake, but all of the people here represent voices of Canadians.

Your job, as has been said, is to bring forward and highlight the voices of Canadians who are not heard through other processes. That does not mean that we will necessarily all agree with what all of those voices have to say. It’s like just a couple of hours ago, maybe it was, when Senator Plett took a shot at me and said that I said that the Rules Committee worked on consensus and that should never happen. Well, no, but I don’t think the Rules Committee works on consensus; I think the Rules Committee puts forward a position of working on a consensus and certain people say, “No, no, no. We don’t have a consensus.” For me, that is exercising a veto, essentially.

We have these tensions, and I think they come primarily from a different understanding and desire for the direction of the Senate.

When it comes to what that means at this moment with the time allocation motion in front of us, I have a history in partisan politics and I hate time allocation motions. I think people should be responsible enough to take the debate as far as it needs to go to hear the variety of voices and to ensure that we have a deliberative discourse that allows us to hear each other.

There is nothing about how this chamber operates that actually supports that.

When I got here, I was appalled when I saw this practice where one person would speak and another person would stand and take the adjournment. It would sometimes be two or three weeks before we got back to that person. How do you listen to each other and ensure you have a coherent debate going forward? I was told that senators needed time to prepare after what they heard.

Maybe it’s not a good example — maybe it’s just the example that I lived in the Ontario legislature — but when we had debates and discussions when a bill came forward, we worked at it and didn’t skip around and adjourn and not come back to it. We talked things through. We got to a point where, responsibly — most of the time — the points had been made. They’d been heard in committee; they made sure there was a full range of witnesses. In fact, every group was able to put forward names, so you could tell there was a full range of views coming forward. Then we debated it out in the legislature, and we came to the point where we voted.

The problem here — and the reason it sticks in my craw that I’m going to support time allocation — is because I have seen with this bill that we have had fulsome debate. In fact, nobody has really talked about the fact that there was a bill in the prior Parliament — Bill C-10 — that was the same as this. It has been around a few times here. We’ve had fulsome debate in this chamber. We had fulsome committee hearings. If that makes up for something that was lacking in the other chamber, as Senator Wallin pointed out, then we have done that; we have made up for that.

I think the characterization that I heard earlier tonight from the leader of the opposition, namely that the government was ramming this through, was unfortunate. I don’t think that is an accurate description. We are at the message stage. For those who are listening and wondering what this is all about, we don’t have the bill before us right now. We are debating putting a time limit on how long we can debate about the message that came from the other place, and the question, fundamentally, is do we accept the message or send it back? And yet, a number of people there would propose that the six hours that have been set aside, one, is not enough; two, is the representative ramming it through; and, three, is not respectful of the voices. None of that, in my view, is true.

I wish we would have an opportunity to have a real debate about the vision of reform in the Senate. If the opposition is tired of feeling like they’re not respected in the things they say, I would say that I respect them in the things they say. I don’t often respect them in the things they do in terms of how they conduct themselves in this place, but I have to say that sometimes I descend to the same level. I apologize for that, Mr. Speaker. You’re the one who has to worry about that the most.

But I would love to have that discussion. I’m not opposed to seeing opposition voices and the Conservative values brought forward. I believe in cognitive diversity. I believe in having all these views on the table. I do oppose you trying to label who I am in my politics, like the colleague directly across from me who tonight said, “You’re a Liberal.” That’s interesting. I voted Conservative, and I’ve voted New Democrat. Sorry, Prime Minister, I’ve never voted for your party.

Don’t tell me who I am. I have my own values and politics, and I bring them to bear in the best way I can in the spirit and respect of what I think this chamber is about. The basic problem is that I don’t think we have an agreement about what this chamber is about.

Thank you very much, Your Honour.

I rise to speak to the time allocation motion. I’m not doing so thinking of the government nor the Leader of the Opposition. I’m not doing so thinking of the Leader of the Government in the Senate nor the chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications. I’m not doing so to convince or prove to anyone in this chamber that I’m an independent senator. I’ve spent part of my life defending my identity and it is not in this chamber that anyone is going to impose an identity on me that I don’t identify with.

When I think about the people in my province and in Canada, I have much more important work to do. I rise thinking about the artists and the cultural sector that participates, thanks to their creations, in their vision of the world and their humanism, the economic, cultural and social development of our country and the development of our culture in the world.

The points raised over the past few hours have highlighted anew the important issues around modernizing the Senate. The need to modernize our institution becomes apparent when we end up in situations like this and I thank all those who elevate the debate constructively.

I rise as a senator with a background in the arts and culture, but above all as a member of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications, which studied Bill C-11 and was first to tackle this bill in the pre-study that began on May 31, 2022.

The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications heard from 138 witnesses and held 31 meetings, including nine meetings for clause-by-clause consideration. We spent a total of 67.5 hours in meetings. This made it possible for the committee to carry out an exhaustive study, and I weigh this word carefully. We heard the testimony of content creators, broadcasting experts, representatives from academia and former presidents and commissioners of the CRTC; associations representing artists and workers in the music and audiovisual sector; associations representing the interests of Indigenous, Black and racialized people; persons with disabilities; and official language minority communities.

The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications did a considerable amount of work, and I was impressed by the work of the committee members, the expertise around the table, the diversity of viewpoints, the pertinence of the questions and the value of the changes. I thank all committee members for their remarkable work.

In addition to the work that was done upstream and during the committee study, my team and I received numerous calls and emails from concerned artists, associations in the audiovisual sector, directors and producers in the music and music publishing sector, in both anglophone and francophone communities. They all asked us to pass Bill C-11 quickly.

As evidence of that, I will repeat the short sequence of public testimony that Senator Dalphond highlighted in one of his speeches last week, which speaks to the sentiment of the cultural sector around Bill C-11.

On March 31, after the other place adopted the message proposed by the government, Bill Skolnik, the co-chair of the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expression, said, and I quote:

In a climate of acrimony and misinformation, we salute the work and courage of the elected officials who, for the past two years, have tirelessly supported the cultural sector and ensured the sustainability of our cultural sovereignty.

Hélène Messier, the other co-chair of the same organization, said, and I quote:

Over the past few months, Senators have conducted a rigorous analysis of the bill and made some improvements. We salute their work, but invite them today to take note of the decisions of the elected officials and to move the bill in its current state towards Royal Assent as quickly as possible.

At a time when The Globe and Mail recently published an article saying that Bill C-11 is likely the bill that’s been studied the longest in the history of the Senate, I can’t help but commend the patience and resilience of those in the arts and culture community who are affected by Bill C-11 in some way. We can’t leave Canada’s music and audiovisual communities out in the cold. That is not an option. They have waited far too long for this bill.

Every week that Bill C-11 isn’t passed means that the CRTC has one less week to begin its work of consulting stakeholders. It will take the CRTC about two years to complete this monumental work. Once these consultations are complete, the mechanisms that will allow platforms to contribute to Canadian content and its discoverability will finally see the light of day. In other words, that is when our artists and cultural community will finally be able to benefit from this bill.

Acadian culture forms the core of my identity. Acadian music has been my livelihood and is what has allowed me to stand before you today. It has shaped my people, the Acadian people. The music industry in Acadia has developed through the initiatives of a structured set of networks and professionals who have discovered and supported Acadian talent.

I’d like to quote a passage from a book entitled L’état de l’Acadie, which gives an overview of Acadia today.

At a time when the music industry has been completely transformed and online listening is leading to a drop in revenues and jeopardizing the ecosystem of the music industry, particularly that of the most fragile players who perform in francophone minority communities, the solution undeniably lies in regulations that promote a more equitable sharing of revenues among the various components of the music industry.

Bill C-11 is the starting point of an important societal and cultural project. The time allocation motion was carefully considered and I believe it is supported by solid arguments. I believe that I’ve expressed in this intervention the reasons why I find six hours to be insufficient. When we’re in the process of creating something, we reach a point where we’ve asked ourselves questions, where we want to go further and we want to delve even deeper. However, when we create something and think of the public waiting on us, we say to ourselves that it is time to adopt this creation, in this case Bill C-11. Thank you.

Honourable senators, as you know, two and a half hours were set aside for debate on this particular motion. It is now two minutes away from the time when we are required to vote. Unless some senator wishes to enter debate for two minutes, I will put the question now. Shall I put the question now?

It was moved by the Honourable Senator Gold, seconded by the Honourable Senator Gagné that, pursuant to rule 7-2, not more than a further six hours of debate be allocated for the consideration of the motion, as amended, to respond to the message from the House of Commons concerning the Senate’s amendments to Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts.

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

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

All those opposed to the motion will please say “nay.”

In my opinion, the “yeas” have it.

I see two senators rising. Do we have agreement on a bell?

Is leave granted, honourable senators?

The vote will take place now.