Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: Senator Tannas, would you take a question? Thank you for raising this important issue and for getting us all to think about the importance of our constitutional responsibilities.

First, if some senators, including members of your caucus and other senators in this chamber, have determined that they will no longer give leave of the sort that you’re describing — that we indulged ourselves in before the Christmas break — why would this motion still be necessary? If senators don’t give leave, we would never be in a situation where we would have to rush a bill through.

Second, while I have the floor, if we retain the power to not give leave at all stages of debate, and retain the power to adjourn debates, we are in fact exercising our rights and therefore would not be in a situation where bills would be rushed.

In that scenario, where we are exercising the normal rules we have, we would be in a situation where the government can make the case for the urgency of a bill through the second-reading speech, which is much more substantial than a brief intervention during the 20-minute debate you have proposed. I’m asking if the current Rules already give us the ability to avoid the sorts of problems you have rightly raised with all of us.

Senator Tannas: The issue for a number of us is that the current rules don’t really allow for a shortened period of time. We have “two days hence.” We have all of the things that drag out the move to committee, all of the steps that drag out the procedures in the House over a number of days at a minimum.

We might not be prepared to give leave, because for many of us, leave is difficult. It is a gun to your head. If you are an individual senator and your group has negotiated leave, or you’re under group influence to provide leave — not to say anything, in other words — and the negotiation has taken place somewhere else, behind closed doors, it looks odd to members of the public to have everybody sitting silently while a bill goes through the stages.

If we’re not going to give leave and we think that leave is part of the problem of enabling legislation, then we must have something to at least replace leave that’s transparent, debatable and subject to vote in a reasonable amount of time to set us on a different track but to do it publicly.

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