Hon. Leo Housakos (Acting Deputy Leader of the Opposition): My question is for the Leader of the Government in the Senate.

While your government was voting against the motion in the House of Commons yesterday to recognize the Uighur genocide and to extend emergency refugee measures to the Uighur people fleeing persecution, it seems that one of the Trudeau government’s members of Parliament appeared to have done the right thing and voted in favour of the motion — Mary Ng. As it turns out, she quickly apologized and said it was a mistake. She even went to the extent, Senator Gold, of rising in the House of Commons on a point of order, asking for the record to be corrected. So the Trudeau government unanimously voted for the motion recognizing the Uighur genocide and giving these people some hope and emergency refugee measures.

I’m really perplexed as to why your government has such a difficult time doing what’s right when it comes to these basic human rights and standing up for this community. Is it because the Trudeau government is afraid of Beijing, or is it an unfortunate simple case that the Uighur people are just too small a voting bloc in Canada for our government to stand up for them?

Hon. Leo Housakos (Acting Deputy Leader of the Opposition): Thank you for the question, Senator Wallin. You are absolutely right; it is very concerning. As you — an active member of the committee — and all of us on the committee have seen, the outgoing chair of the CRTC came before the committee.

Actually, his testimony created a storm and raised a lot more questions than he actually answered. If anything, he confirmed that what the government has been saying is the opposite of how he reads the legislation in terms of acknowledging that he will have the authority, under this bill, to force platforms to manipulate algorithms. This is, of course, of great concern to independent content providers and should be of concern to all of us.

We have taken steps to bring the CRTC chair back to the committee — at his request but as well at the request of our steering committee.

You are absolutely right. It has become evidently clear that his mandate is ending in the next little while, and the government is in search of a new CRTC chair. If one is to be logical about this, the most important part of this bill is the regulatory aspect of it, which is squarely on the shoulders of the incoming chair of the CRTC and the board.

I agree it would be irresponsible on the part of Parliament to pass this bill without getting all of our Ts crossed and Is dotted, and hearing from someone associated with the most important part of this legislation.

I know there are members of steering who wanted to pass this bill last week. We continue our discussions in terms of trying to maintain our course of having a robust, wide-ranging study. I hope that steering will agree to do that.

I will personally take to steering that we consider having the incoming CRTC chair testify, along with the minister, before we return here for final approval.

Senator Housakos: Thank you for that question as well, senator. We have. It was brought to the attention of the steering committee by Senator Klyne that we had not done enough due diligence in terms of reaching out to Indigenous voices on this bill.

There are a number of potential witnesses that steering has instructed the clerk to reach out to and bring before our committee. I don’t have the list before me, but I can assure you that we will not move forward until Indigenous voices are consulted in a robust manner.