Honourable senators, my question is for the Leader of the Government in the Senate.

Senator Harder, three years ago Liberal Party Leader Justin Trudeau made a political choice to — how would the CEO of United Airlines put this — "re-accommodate" Liberal senators with years of parliamentary knowledge and experience from his caucus. That was a mistake. Then, in your former role as the head of the Trudeau government transition team, you advised Prime Minister Trudeau on changes to the Senate. With your guidance, this Trudeau government made a political choice to stop appointing senators as part of the government caucus but instead to appoint ostensibly independent senators. The problem is that this government, advised by you, failed to think through the ramifications of that political choice.

Now you are finding it difficult to pass the Trudeau government's paltry legislative agenda through this chamber. Your grand experiment is a failure, and rather than admit that and work on fixing it, now you want to change all of the rules and destroy Canada's parliamentary system in the process.

The current parliamentary system of a government and an opposition has served this country well for 150 years, and now you want to destroy that entire history to serve the whims of one person, Justin Trudeau — well, two people if you count Gerry Butts.

Senator Harder, what will it take for you to admit that this whole ill-conceived scheme has been a colossal mistake?

Some Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!

Hon. Peter Harder (Government Representative in the Senate): I thank the honourable senator for her question. Let me say that well before any appointments were made by Prime Minister Trudeau, the first of which were sworn in a year ago today — happy anniversary — this Senate, in its wisdom, and it was wise, began a modernization process. That modernization process is underway, and it is one in which all honourable senators will have voice, both through the committee's work and, ultimately, when the reports come to the Senate.

The future and the modernization of the Senate are in the hands of all senators equally. What the Prime Minister has done is given the Senate the opportunity to do just that and to build on the approach he took to have an advisory committee make recommendations to appoint independent senators. The objective has been to achieve a more independent, less partisan, transparent, accountable and complementary chamber to that of the other place. That is something that we are all going to work on, at a pace and with the architecture that we all conclude is the way forward. It is not in the hands of the Prime Minister, by any means. It is in our collective hands.

I look forward to working with all senators, both those who have served a long time and those who have come here as recently as last December, and with the committees that have been established on our behalf collectively, so that we can, as the months and years go forward, bring the Senate to become the institution our founders designed it to be and the one our people of Canada expect it to be.

Senator Batters: Senator Harder, as the Trudeau transition team head, you would have advised the Prime Minister on progressing government legislation through the Senate. Once you were appointed to the Senate and then appointed as the Trudeau government leader in the Senate, you could have set those plans in motion. But because your plan may not have been fully thought out, now you are having difficulties getting legislation through, and you want to change all the rules because, frankly, your plan was a bit of a stinker to begin with.

Now you are proposing the establishment of a Senate business committee, a kind of politburo to set the government's agenda in this place, but that is supposed to the job of the government leader, the government deputy leader and the government whip.

Senator Harder, your office has a $1.5 million budget for a caucus of three. We now know that your legion of staff has been spending its time writing a 20-page document that advocates the destruction of our Canadian parliamentary system to accommodate your government's failed experiment. You are not attending cabinet committees, you are not answering questions on behalf of the government in this chamber, and you helped to create an unworkable system that is not passing what few pieces of legislation this Trudeau government has bothered to propose.

You served in the public service for many years, Senator Harder. What kind of a performance review would you give an employee like that?

Senator Harder: A former Conservative senator sent me a note the other day, and I would use it as a response, with all due respect to the original syntax of Barry Goldwater: "Excessive language in defence of old-style partisanship is no virtue. Moderation in defence of less partisanship is no vice."