Hon. Scott Tannas: Thank you, senator, for your intervention. We are still friends.

I wanted to ask for your comments on a couple of things. First of all, let me say I totally agree with you. I know Senator Mercer mentioned this at Christmastime.

We have to be brave enough and apply the right amount of sobriety to a decision to reject any argument that says we shouldn’t amend because the House of Commons has gone home. I agree with you. If we collectively say we will do that, then I have no problem staying here for as long as it takes to thoroughly study bills at the end of sessions. But it is galling that we are asked to whistle something through, not study it properly or be able to deal with amendments.

I want to associate myself with that portion of your speech.

I think I said that I don’t believe that Motion No. 30 is going to fix all of our problems, but there have been some scenarios, and you mentioned some in your speech. Let me give you some scenarios where this would be helpful.

We know that in our Rules a piece of legislation needs two days to go from first reading to second reading, and one day to go from second reading to third reading. This would eliminate that. Instead, at second reading the leader could stand up and say, “This is an emergency. We need to get rid of the two days and the one day, and we need to focus on this because of time.” We could then take it from there. We could send it out for a two-day study. We could do whatever we want, but we’re not wasting time on days.

The scenario that I also wanted to raise was one that didn’t happen but very nearly happened in this chamber in the last week, and that would have been back‑to-work legislation where the modus operandi would have been to ask for leave and would have put at least one member of this chamber in the incredibly uncomfortable spot of granting leave in order to speed up back-to-work legislation. If we had this, that senator and others could exercise their right to object without having the wheels go off the cart.

I’m wondering what piece of the Rules you would imagine we could use that could then replicate this in a way that is within the Rules. In other words, how do we suspend without granting leave and requiring every single senator to sit with their mouths shut and on their hands in cases where maybe it’s a religious thing, maybe there is a key piece of social legislation that they vehemently oppose? That’s familiar, where there is an emergency and we need to get it through for whatever reason. That was being somewhat sold to us at Christmastime on Bill C-6.

How do you see this going? This may not be the answer, but I’m interested to know what thought you gave to some of those scenarios that we have confronted or very nearly confronted.