Hon. Leo Housakos introduced Bill S-247, An Act to amend the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (Sergei Magnitsky Law).

(Bill read first time.)

Hon. Leo Housakos: Honourable senators, my question is for the government leader. Senator Gold, yesterday, your Liberal-NDP government voted against dropping or even easing the onerous travel restrictions in this country that are crippling our airline industries, crippling our airports and having a devastating effect on our tourism industry, on which so many Canadians are depending. Furthermore, today, your government, the Trudeau government, pokes Canadians in the eye by announcing that they will extend these travel mandates until the end of at least another month.

Senator Gold, the Canadian government and our country are increasingly becoming outliers as we see the vast majority of nations around the world removing these vindictive travel restrictions, including friends and allies like New Zealand and Australia.

I have a simple question on behalf of Canadians, and I would like a simple answer, outside of the usual political variety that we hear in this chamber. Can you tell us, from the Trudeau government, what science are you and your government using that the rest of the world is unaware of?

Senator Housakos: Senator Gold, as mentioned, two of the most COVID-locked-down nations in the world during this pandemic, New Zealand and Australia, have dropped their vaccine requirements for international travellers. Others are going even further. Nations, like our allies in the United Kingdom, have dropped all restrictions, including masking when travelling on planes.

You just mentioned, Senator Gold, what I think is not accurate. I do not see anywhere the Public Health Agency of Canada having put out a statement saying that the science backs up what this government is doing. Furthermore, if you can, also point out any medical journal around the world that will back up what this government is doing. If you have something that justifies this nothing-more-than-vindictive policy on the part of this government, please table it in this chamber in a concrete, written form.

Will you provide in this chamber the justification for what clearly the rest of the world and all our other allies don’t seem to be aligned with? Why are we continuing to have these restrictions?

Hon. Leo Housakos: Honourable senators, I want to speak on this important debate. I don’t want to debate the merits of Bill C-13 or Bill C-11, but my comments will equally apply to both the motions on the Order Paper, the current one and the one to follow.

Clearly, there is no urgency requirement, colleagues, in order to have a pre-study. I think anybody who attempts to make the argument that a pre-study is urgently needed here is doing nothing more than acquiescing to what may be the government’s agenda, for political reasons.

Senator Plett made a very compelling case in his speech about all the examples where pre-studies have been used. It’s an important tool in Parliament. It’s a tool we use whenever there is an urgent public interest in order to address an issue. We have seen it done time and time again. More often, it seems to happen toward the end of a parliamentary session because government wants to get something out before we rise either for the summer break or for the Christmas break. It’s not done ever, to my knowledge, because all of a sudden they — successive governments — want Parliament to dive into an issue for as long a time as possible, study it and analyze it because it’s so important.

That seems to be the impression we’re getting from our honourable colleague Senator Cormier.

So if this is such an urgent and pressing issue in the case of Bill C-13 and Bill C-11, why has the government putzed around for seven years before in both these instances of moving legislation forward? They haven’t because, clearly, there hasn’t been an outcry.

In the case of Bill C-13 and Bill C-11, if they don’t pass by the end of June — and, clearly, the government’s objective is to get it out of the House and this chamber as quickly as possible before we rise — but if it doesn’t happen, what will happen?

We have been operating with our Official Languages Act now for a very long time before this has come before us. Our Telecommunications Act and Broadcasting Act have been neglected for decades by governments. For this government, it wasn’t much of a priority either because they tried to drop it in this chamber on the eve of prorogation last year around this time, before they were going into an election.

I have come to the conclusion that this pre-study is an attempt to do what governments historically have done when it’s not an urgent public issue: They usually try to use a pre-study and try to ram stuff through Parliament because it’s controversial. There is no consensus; there are two sides that just don’t agree. As a result, governments don’t like for such bills to linger. They don’t like them to linger in the House or in the Senate.

Well, I’m sorry to the executive branch of government, but as we have experienced with Bill C-11 — it was called Bill C-10 in the previous Parliament — we all understood what the government was doing and we stood up on the eve of the last prorogation as parliamentarians, in consensus, and we said that it required an in-depth debate. I was happy to hear Senator Cormier, who all of a sudden embraces pre-studies, say that it required a long and lengthy debate.

Now to the fundamentals of reality, Senator Gold. Again, we look at the life of this session before we rise for the summer. Normally, it would be at the end of June. Again, Senator Plett appropriately highlighted the challenges we’re currently having for our committees to meet in the actual times that we require to do our work, let alone add pre-study requirements to the government agenda, which is already taking up all our resources. As the House is adding more resources, the chamber here gets hurt with that reality as well.

If I can remind people of another government motion — and we should start reviewing these government motions a little more diligently when they are tabled — we were promised when we accepted the last government motion to extend until the end of June hybrid and virtual sittings that somehow that will be a catalyst in returning our committees to their times of two meetings a week, because we all have come to the realization that we’re not producing the output of work the way we used to as a chamber.

We were given the commitment that, if we support that government motion, committees will get their two slots a week and we’ll get back to getting this place revving forward and doing its work.

Now in addition to the government not delivering on that promise, they want us to add a pre-study to two particular bills that none of us see the urgency of getting out before June. All of us see that they are contentious bills and require in-depth study. We know that many, many witnesses have expressed a desire to come before the respective committees in order to address the issues. Yet the government continues to insist that we need to have a pre-study.

Furthermore — and I don’t want to repeat everything that Senator Plett said, because his speech was an outstanding one — the truth of the matter is these two chambers are independent in our Westminster model. If committees are going to do their respective work in a diligent fashion, they also have the right to amend bills, right?

We should not assume that they are going to be steamrolled through a House committee without amendments and steamrolled through this chamber and a Senate committee without amendments, particularly when we know that both these bills are controversial and that many stakeholders have concerns.

We have an obligation to independently hear the committees on both houses. We have an obligation to hear the debate in terms of second and third readings. What we particularly have an obligation to do in this place is to take the politics outside of all bills, including government bills, which inadvertently will happen on the other side. That is why it is called the House of Commons.

I think only where necessary should we accept the use of this tool of allowing pre-studies to happen in extenuating circumstances. We’ve done it many times when there is a public need, when we’re dealing with an existential crisis that requires funding and there is a general consensus and we know that there is a consensus from the public in order to get money bills through here quickly. We did it through COVID non-stop. If there is a particular crisis or emergency of sorts, again, we understand that we have to make exceptions, and then the traditional parliamentary rules in order to accommodate those public interests.

But, government leader, in both these instances, there is no emergency — we all know it and you know it — other than the fact that the government doesn’t want these two contentious issues to be dragged out in either part of our two chambers, because like any government they don’t like to get a headline where someone is criticizing their agenda.

The other thing I have to highlight, colleagues, is that this particular Trudeau government has not been very good at identifying emergencies. The last time that they had this chamber debating on something which was an emergency it was called the Emergencies Act, if you all recall. Some of us were up on our feet questioning that emergency at the time, and there were other senators who were embracing that emergency as the Prime Minister was running to a press gallery to basically say, “Sorry, I’m pulling the plug now, it is not as big an emergency as it was yesterday.”

So there is a track record here, government leader, of this government not being good at identifying emergencies and dealing with emergencies.

Again, I asked the question last week when this motion was tabled. I never got a legitimate answer from the government leader. Given the resource challenges that we have as a chamber and as a Parliament, given the fact that no one has made a compelling case that there is an outcry by the Canadian public either for Bill C-13 or for Bill C-11 to be rammed through this Parliament without thorough debate, the reality is even if we accept this pre-study, I still have not had an answer from this government: What is a timeline that you think is reasonable for this bill, government leader, to become law?

Because given our agenda the next three to four weeks both in the House and in the Senate it is very unrealistic to think even if there is a pre-study, even if a majority of senators here will stand up to support the government on this motion, I still find it difficult to believe, realistically, that this bill can pass, unless the government thinks that it is such an emergency that they are willing to keep Parliament here past the month of June through July and August — which, by the way, you had the right to do last year as well and chose not to, right? We need clarity on all of those things, government leader, and we have not had it up to this point.

For all of those reasons I have highlighted and outlined, I do not believe, colleagues, that this is in any way a compelling case for a pre-study, neither on Bill C-13 nor on Bill C-11, and, of course, we’ll leave it to the good judgment of this chamber to decide. Thank you very much.

[Translation]

Hon. Leo Housakos: Honourable senators, in the words of former senator George Baker, “I will be brief.” I will try not to repeat the same arguments, of course, that I did in the previous motion in relation to Bill C-13.

I want to point out the following: I still haven’t heard from either the Government Representative or the sponsor of this bill what the urgency is, what the public interest is, with Bill C-11, in order for us to do what is really unusual in this particular circumstance. This place is the place of sober second thought. The role of the Senate is to be a complementary body to the House of Commons, not to be a parallel one. I agreed totally with Senator Simons and Senator Tannas when they said that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be dragged into the partisan context and aspect of studies and votes that are taking place over in the House of Commons.

I know it’s funny coming from me because I am unapologetically partisan, but I am also the chair of this committee and I have some experience in this place. I think it’s imperative to ask questions when we see the government so dead set on trying to get something done. And I don’t want to impugn motives, but, Senator Gold, although you might say that there is no objective for the government to ram this through this chamber before we rise in a few weeks, quite honestly, the vigour and the intensity with which representatives of the Government Representative Office are debating this and trying to get the point across in this chamber are making it abundantly clear that that might just be the intention of the government.

I also want to point this out very importantly: I have a great deal of difficulty, as the chair of the Transport and Communications Committee, with doing a pre-study on such an important bill where there is such a difference of opinion. It’s such a controversial bill across this country, and to date the government refuses, from my understanding, to deposit, to make public, the policy directives and the regulatory framework, which are such important parts of this bill.

Don’t nod your head back and forth. You will remember last summer we had the same argument on this same floor. The government finally made the regulatory framework public last June at, I think, five minutes to midnight on the side of the House of Commons. Now you want us to do a pre-study on this important bill — again, this controversial bill. To my understanding, as of today the government refuses to make public the regulatory framework in the House of Commons.

Now, the regulatory framework on such bills, as you know, is really part and parcel of the bill. It really determines some of the important elements of the bill that need to be studied and reviewed.

All I would like is a firm commitment from the Government Representative before we engage in even thinking about doing a pre-study. Will you commit the government to making the regulatory framework public, allowing us to have it once we are engaged in study? And I know the government will ram this through and we will commence the study. Will you at least commit to making the regulatory framework public so that the committees in both the House and the Senate will have it? I think it’s essential. Without it, we cannot do our work. Thank you, colleagues.