Hon. Raymonde Saint-Germain: Senator Tannas, would you take another question?

[English]

Senator Tannas: Yes.

[Translation]

Senator Saint-Germain: You’ve sparked such an interesting conversation, and you seem to think that, so far, the Senate Rules and practices have not enabled us to separate urgent bills from non-urgent bills and have prevented us from providing serious, thorough, sober second thought on certain bills.

Do you think that the pre-studies that our Rules allow us to authorize also help us get ahead on our study of bills in some cases? Do you think that avenue could be beneficial in some potentially urgent situations, although not in every case, and could help us avoid simply rubber-stamping a bill? Do you think pre-studies are a tool and practice that we should make use of as much as possible?

[English]

Senator Tannas: Yes, I believe in pre-studies, and we have done them on a number of bills. I would say that part of the frustration a number of us had at Christmastime involved a bill that was pre-studied and, literally hours before it arrived here, it grew a whole new section that had never been studied and was dropped in. So sometimes even with our best intentions, politics in the House come into play.

I think that the more tools we can have within our Rules, like pre-study — there is a process by which we approve that — the better. And rather than always defaulting to negotiations and operating with leave or through other means that aren’t transparent and aren’t necessarily thoughtful — at least as far as the public sees — the more we can avoid that and incorporate things in our Rules.