Senator Lankin: Yes, please.

Hon. Frances Lankin: Honourable senators, the saying is that timing is everything. I’m not sure how to come down from the important and vital discussion that we had with interventions by Senator Simons and Senator Housakos and others to talk about the Rules of the Senate, as important as these are, but I will try and just put forward some brief thoughts on this.

This motion was put forward by Senator Tannas and the Canadian Senators Group. I want to thank them for the work they did in determining how to approach this issue. The issue is one that many of us talk about, complain about, whine about, and it is something that the general public would have no direct knowledge of or see as insider baseball. It’s difficult to command time to find solutions to that and that issue is the challenge that the Senate has when bills arrive in such a time frame from the House of Commons with an urgent request from the government to deal with this in a quick and expedited fashion.

Now, when I began my remarks when this item was last called, I was present in the chamber and not virtual, and I could see the reaction of a number of people when I said I basically agree with the intent, direction and the attempt put forward by this motion. My apologies to my dear colleagues in the GRO. They all looked at me with some shock and I understand why. They have a job to do and I appreciate how hard they and their team all work in impressing upon the government the need to respond and plan in a different way and to give sufficient time — not wasteful time but sufficient time — for the Senate to deal with items in a thorough fashion that allows us to do our job and do our job appropriately on behalf of Canadians and at the expense of taxpayer dollars. I understand and I do thank them for that work.

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I also want to say that in terms of our complaints about governments, the Senate’s complaints about how government handled these things stretch over many governments; it’s not just this government. In fact, at this point in time and this Parliament, I acknowledge that we’re dealing with a minority government and that other parties have as much influence over the timing of things coming through to the Senate as the government does. Having said that, I still want to put forward that I support the intent of this.

There are many different opinions around the Senate about whether this particular motion and the particular rule changes being proposed are the appropriate or necessary steps to achieve our goal. I know we will hear speakers coming from different perspectives.

What I have not heard from a majority of senators is a lack of agreement with the concern that Senator Tannas raised. That’s important for us to bring into our consideration as we look forward. If not this, what are the options?

Some will say that the options are using the existing rules. While rules do exist, there are ways to deny requests for leave to expedite. There are other ways in which people can get across the message and achieve a different response, perhaps in timing, and we’ll hear some of those from other speakers to come on this.

However, none of those truly deal with the concern that Senator Tannas and the Conservative Senators Group have raised about the inevitable pressure put on groups or caucuses within the Senate to respond in a way that meets the sense of emergency that is conveyed to us from the government.

I believe that this is an important discussion for us to have. The discussion comes out of frustration with lived experience with this problem as an institution for many years, as the group of us sitting here now for the last few sessions of Parliament has experienced.

The frustration is exacerbated by all the conditions and stresses that we lived through with the pandemic, with all of the world activities that are going on, by the way — and I will say it directly — with an opposition in the Senate that rings bells unnecessarily many times, uses the rules that are there in a dilatory fashion. Again, I understand the reasons for it.

All of those things contribute to a less-than-effective and efficient operation of this chamber and of a consideration with full force of the Senate’s capabilities being put to government legislation that is coming through in every circumstance.

The thing that concerns me about the response that says “just use the existing rules” is that all of those discussions generally take place before they come to the floor and we would use those rules. All of those discussions take place in a meeting among leaders. I fully respect our leadership within the Senate, leaders and facilitators; I respect the work they do and what they bring forward. However, the need for understanding emergency, the need for understanding what it affects in terms of the rest of the scheduled agenda, the need for understanding what it means for perhaps a truncated study or, in cases other than money bills, pre‑studies in which we are not actually dealing with the bill in its final form coming from the House of Commons, I find it concerning that it is not a discussion that is fully transparent to the whole Senate or open for the whole Senate to take a decision on — whether we agree with that kind of approach for dealing with the issue of emergency or urgent handling of bills, treatment of bills in the Senate and voting on bills. As I said earlier, echoing Senator Tannas, it also brings the pressure to bear on either individuals or individual groups.

I don’t see anything unreasonable if the government brings forward on first reading a request that, under these rule changes, automatically could bring forward a 20-minute discussion of what the nature of the emergency is and hear a back and forth. The Senate could vote on that with only a 15-minute bell. That is barely over a half-hour. Most of the unnecessary dilatory bell‑ringing that goes on in this chamber is an hour or multiple back‑to‑backs, several hours sometimes, when it occurs like that. I don’t see what is unreasonable about that.

Yes, we could use other rules that are there, but not necessarily in the same efficient way. The reasons are put out. It’s transparent. The Senate takes a vote and those reasons are understood and accepted. And I think, in the majority of cases, the Senate is reasonable in how they respond and they would, in fact, respond appropriately if it’s truly an emergency. But it brings the transparency to it. It brings it to a decision of the Senate as a whole. Because of the structure of the rules and the timelines, and the automatic right of the Government Representative or the Government Representative Office to bring forward immediately the declaration of this being an urgent matter and have that debated upon, that brings us efficiency.

If people have other ideas, I would urge them to find a way of bringing a small group of people together to talk this through, to see if people could reach a consensus and bring that forward and let us thoroughly, as a chamber, talk about that. Otherwise, I think what has been brought forward is a constructive proposal. It is one that tries to get at the heart of the problem, without creating more delays, and it is to be commended.

I also know that those colleagues who will disagree with the specific approach, but who share the reasoning behind the intent that this is a concern for our chamber, will bring forward their ideas of what is an effective alternative. At the end of the day, that’s what we will have to vote on.

With that, I will keep my remarks uncharacteristically short and stop at this point in time. Thank you very much.

Hon. Frances Lankin: Senator Simons, thank you. That was another eloquent speech by you. It’s much appreciated.

I particularly like the phrase that you brought forward from the Conservative strategist about a “thought scam.” I’ll elevate my language because I have been calling it a “bot scam.”

Quite frankly, it’s not just Bill S-233; this began immediately following the occupation that took place in Ottawa. It involved communications legislation, which you were just referring to, and others.

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It is absolutely clear to me that a large majority of these have been electronically generated. When they come in 1,000 at a time and they have very similar themes, you know those are not individuals.

I have also reached out — when it appeared to be a genuine, individual person — to discuss it, to tell them my views, to tell them what I think the reality is, but the other ones, any that I have tried to reach, there is no reaching because there is no person. This is fundamentally an issue of an undermining of democracy.

Do you, Senator Simons, think there is, beyond our individual actions, a collective response from the Senate that should be taken? The leaders of the various groups in the Senate, some of whom —

Hon. Frances Lankin: Honourable senators, I think there may be some controversy here. I truly appreciate your speech, senator. In addition to Senator Simons’s speech, this is an important moment in the Senate, with a laser focus on this. I want to ask you three questions.

First, you said that you didn’t think the registry was a silver bullet. Will you explain how the registry would work and how it will help? Embedded in that is an understanding of how some of this foreign influence takes place, that the people doing the targeting are not always obvious and that names could not always be added to a registry.

Second, if there were a criticism of your bill, what do you think it would be? Where could the bill be improved?

Third, is there something the Senate could do beyond passing or amending your bill to bring greater focus on this issue? Is there a joint project in which we should be engaging? Thank you very much.

Senator Lankin: From my dear colleague in the GRO, yes.