Senator Tannas: I’m glad you raised this. It’s a good one that goes to an episode of “The Crown.” The finance minister did not say one word about this in her speech. You’re right; it was in an annex to the budget. It was on page 254 of Annex No. 3 of the budget plan for 2023. It says:

. . . the government proposes to amend the Canada Elections Act to establish a uniform . . . approach in respect of federal political parties’ collection, use, and disclosure of personal information in a manner that overrides overlapping provincial legislation.

That’s what it said. There is not a peep about it in the budget speech, and here we have one paragraph of two sentences in the back.

Yes, the rules have been sufficiently torqued such that all you have to do is stick it somewhere in the volumes of budget documents, and it qualifies as a budget. If I were asking you the question, I would say, “Can you point me to any line item of spending at which this particular division applies?”

Senator Tannas: Senator Woo and I have an understanding. The reason we went this way is that the amendment specifically asks — begs — for a bill to be placed before us to do our study in a full and complete fashion. It preserves what is there and asks that we have a bill. Did you miss that, or am I not catching the nuance?

Senator Tannas: I really wasn’t ready to go that far by deleting things that a government is intending to do. I felt it was better that we try to improve upon it while making a point. I was also thinking of the public. This isn’t on the public’s radar screen, but if it were, they would be hopping mad, and they would expect something to be done.

So deleting it leaves us where we are. I think this, at least, has highlighted it and can continue to highlight it.

That’s the best answer I can give. Thank you.

Senator Tannas: Certainly.

Senator Tannas: Yes, that’s exactly right. Our legal minds here in the Senate, who do such a great job for us, the way that they have written it is that section would stay in, but it would be repealed in two years. That’s to give everyone time.

When you read it, it’s kind of clunky. It seems as if it’s backwards, but it’s not. It’s essentially saying that we have a sunset clause of two years and that these two sentences that are in there proclaiming this wonderful new privacy regime that doesn’t exist would go away if it hasn’t been replaced, essentially.

Senator Tannas: I’m glad you raised this. It’s a good one that goes to an episode of “The Crown.”. The finance minister did not say one word about this in her speech. You’re right; it was in an annex to the budget. It was on page 254 of Annex No. 3 of the budget plan for 2023. It says:

Senator Tannas: I’m glad you raised this. It’s a good one that goes to an episode of “The Crown.”. The finance minister did not say one word about this in her speech. You’re right; it was in an annex to the budget. It was on page 254 of Annex No. 3 of the budget plan for 2023. It says:

. . . the government proposes to amend the Canada Elections Act to establish a uniform . . . approach in respect of federal political parties’ collection, use, and disclosure of personal information in a manner that overrides overlapping provincial legislation.

That’s what it said. There is not a peep about it in the budget speech, and here we have one paragraph of two sentences in the back.

Yes, the rules have been sufficiently torqued such that all you have to do is stick it somewhere in the volumes of budget documents, and it qualifies as a budget. If I were asking you the question, I would say, “Can you point me to any line item of spending at which this particular division applies?”

Senator Tannas: Yes.

Senator Tannas: I have made it a habit of supporting government budgets. They’re elected; they’re there. I will continue to do that no matter which government is in power and no matter whether I agree with the spending or not.

I haven’t, frankly, got that far yet. I still have a light in the window that maybe this will pass.

There is so much that is good in this act. I would sure love to be able to vote, having received a message that the government has at least considered an amendment from us, at least received the message that we’ve reached our fill of this and that we need to do something else.

Senator Tannas: Well, originally I thought 18 months because I had heard somewhere that you can get just about anything written and consulted on within 18 months. However, I did purposely pick two years instead of three because I think they should make an effort to do this before the next election. By all accounts, it’s going to be a highly active election. The public is very engaged. They’re going to say things — in my example — at the door. Things are going to happen around artificial intelligence and all of the data work. We had the Cambridge Analytica revelations.

Going into this particular upcoming election, there are a lot of things that may have lasting impacts on people’s privacy and the data they will be disclosing that will be collected on them. Therefore, I think it’s reasonable to say that this needs to be dealt with in the next two years.

Senator Tannas: Well, I would tell you I was here before and I’m here now, and the standing orders may have changed. The work product is identical.

Senator Tannas: I don’t believe it is a confidence vote. We’ve seen budget implementation acts amended before. In fact, we’ve seen in this government’s time frame that they have been amended. The government didn’t fall.

That is one of the pressure tactics that is used, but if that’s the case, if we can’t touch the budget implementation act, then how could a government ever resist sticking something in there that no one can do anything about?

It goes to what those bright-eyed people in 2015 said about frustrating the work of Parliament and making it undemocratic. I think that it is intellectually dishonest to say that this piece, because it happens to be in a giant omnibus bill that is named the “Budget Implementation Act,” that our changing something in it would, in fact, cause a government to fall.

I would also say that we are at the end of the session, but we’re not at the end of the session. The government is still over with their colleagues in the House of Commons. They are still meeting today. They haven’t upped and gone home like sometimes when we get the budget implementation act and we have to deal with that issue. I would also say that they have voted and approved hybrid, so them coming back isn’t them coming back at all. They just have to get on their laptops at home to deal with whatever it is that we have sent.

I reject completely the idea that something that is not to do with the budget somehow becomes a confidence vote if you stick it in a budget implementation act. Thank you.

Senator Tannas: Absolutely.

Senator Tannas: Thank you, I’ve been thinking about this because I hate people who put problems down and don’t have any solutions.

First, I intend to launch an inquiry where we can get some ideas on the table. My own personal idea is that, at some point, we should send a message that says that the first order of business for a budget implementation act is that we will review it to look for possible items that we believe need more study, more time or should be in a separate bill, and we will carve those out of any future BIAs. That would be something we could do.

If we gave them advance notice, maybe they would consider that. If they didn’t consider that, then we could decide whether we want to follow through with something that we have indicated we would do.

That’s one idea. I think there are a lot of other ideas.

This is part of what Senator Gold has always talked about: that he is the representative of the government in the Senate and he is the representative of the Senate in the government. I think if we spent some time and all made some proposals and discussed what we think and got the conversation going, we could arrive at a consensus here on how to deal with this so that we’re not again having Groundhog Day next June on the budget implementation act.

Senator Tannas: First of all, I think there is. We can hold public hearings if we want. We could figure out which committee needs to go. We can go out on the road and hold some public hearings.

At the end of the day, you can’t blame the political parties. Why would any organization rush headlong into something that is going to bring more accountability and a whole lot more transparency and work, et cetera?

As far as political parties go, I think there are a lot of complicated issues. You knock on somebody’s door, and they tell you something, “I’m going to do this; I hate this” — whatever. Now all of a sudden you’re in possession of information they’ve given, but they don’t know what you’re going to do with it.

These days with technology, you walk down to the bottom of the sidewalk, you key what that person said into your phone and it goes into a database. For all I know — nobody in here knows — it might go to the fundraising arm of the party immediately with a customized letter that says, “We are doing on X and Y” on the thing that person just said they hated. They could sell it — who knows — because they are not required under any law to do anything. They could have had a data leak. We had a data leak. The Green Party had a data leak and voluntarily disclosed it. They didn’t have to because they’re not subject to any law, but they disclosed it anyway. We don’t know if any or all the other parties have had a data leak and didn’t disclose it. That’s the situation.

So I agree with you. This is an issue that maybe a Senate committee could be helpful with. I don’t know, though. I guess that’s for us to decide in the fullness of time.

Hon. Scott Tannas: Honourable senators, let me say, first of all, I’m speaking as a senator from Alberta and not in my capacity in any way as the leader of the Canadian Senators Group. I rise to speak to Bill C-47, known as the budget implementation act. I would suggest that it should probably be renamed the “budget implementation and a bunch of other stuff act,” but we’ll leave it where it is.

This is my eleventh year here and the eleventh June when I have seen a budget implementation act come through.

I want to make my comments today really around three things, first of all, the growing problem, as I see it, of omnibus legislation on a wide range of issues, unrelated to the actual implementation of a budget.

I want to highlight what I believe is one of the most egregious items that would stand as an example of the growing problem which we have in this bill that we are being asked to pass today.

Finally, I will propose a simple amendment that would provide a vehicle for us to improve this legislation, which I believe is our job, as always.

I’ll start with the budget implementation problem that I believe we have. Page 30 of the Liberal 2015 electoral platform states:

Stephen Harper has . . . used omnibus bills to prevent Parliament from properly reviewing and debating his proposals. We will change the House of Commons Standing Orders to bring an end to this undemocratic practice.

I believe it’s as true today as it was then that this is an undemocratic process, at its worst; at its best, I think it adds efficiency.

Nonetheless, that was a platform of fresh ideas and new ways of doing things. I believe it was brought forward with the best of intentions.

A few months after Parliament reconvened with a new government, the first budget implementation act under the Liberal government was proposed, and it ran to 179 pages, which was seven pages longer than the egregious last budget implementation act of the Harper government. We didn’t start out very well on the fresh and good idea of limiting omnibus budget bills. We now know that we are over 400 pages — for the last six or seven budget implementation acts that have been presented, we’ve reached up to 800 pages, in one case.

Colleagues, a budget implementation act, in its absolute purest form, should be a list of required legislative items that are tied to the spending and the revenue lines in a budget. Much of this budget implementation act does, in fact, do that. But budget implementation acts now — and going back many years — contain a litany of legislative items that are unrelated to the actual budget, but have been placed in the bill for convenience, efficiency or time sensitivity.

Sometimes — and I worry it is happening more frequently now — items are also stuffed into the budget implementation act for the purpose of avoiding proper scrutiny. I think that should concern us all.

My wife and I enjoyed the Netflix show called “The Crown.” I don’t know how many of you saw it; I recommend it if you haven’t. In the opening episode, a dying King George has the young mother and bride Elizabeth — the soon-to-be queen — in his study because he knows he’s dying, and he needs to start schooling her on the practical elements of being the monarch. In that episode, and in that particular scene, he’s there with the red box in his study. The red box has all of the papers that the king is supposed to read regarding what is happening in the government. He explains that to Elizabeth. He said, “Here is a very important thing to do.” He lifts up the box’s lid, takes all of the papers out and turns them upside down. He said, “What they don’t want me to see is on the bottom.”

That brings me to Division 39 of our budget implementation act. It is, in fact, on the bottom. It is on page 409, and it is the last division in the budget implementation act.

It deals with the privacy laws that apply to federal political parties. Essentially, up until 2018, federal political parties were exempt from privacy legislation. In 2018, the government passed legislation that required federal political parties to develop and adopt a formal privacy policy. They never said what had to be in it. They never said there had to be any consequences. They just had to have one — that is the legislation that exists today.

In 2018, when they included that tiny provision — that forced political parties to have a privacy policy — it was proclaimed by the minister as the first step in the protection of privacy for citizens.

Five years later, nothing has changed. As far as I can tell — in the research that my office and I did — there is not a single other organization in this country that is not subject to privacy laws except for federal political parties.

What did we get in this bill? It’s interesting — we got nothing. If you read it, we have a declaration that said that what exists is a uniform, exclusive and complete regime to protect citizens’ privacy in regard to political parties. That’s all it said. It didn’t provide for anything other than that — there were no details; there was nothing.

All we have at this moment are those words that mean exactly nothing.

Some would suggest — and I think Senator Loffreda mentioned this — that the declaration sets the stage for future legislation, just like the first step five years ago set the stage for future changes. In fact, Senator Loffreda, in his second-reading speech, said the following when talking about the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee that studied this particular provision:

In its report, the committee reminds us, “The amendment creates a framework for a potential future regime. It does not actually establish any such regime.”

He went on to say:

I appreciate some may feel the division is not robust enough and does not go far enough, fast enough. So I would urge the government to make this a priority and not delay any further.

I think that is a fair and optimistic view by a self-proclaimed optimist, and I’m a fan. It’s important to look for the best in people and look for the best of intentions; I believe that way of thinking is my reflex as well.

A more cynical view of this potential division would be that this declaration is meant to be a shield to protect the status quo — where political parties operate with impunity, while provincial privacy commissioners are being bombarded with complaints because there is nobody else to complain to. They are looking to take action. In fact, in one province, they have begun a court challenge.

As cynical as it might be, some are of the view — and it was mentioned at committee, but it might not have been on the record — that there is no intention to change. There is simply the intention to place the shield here that would prevent the provinces from acting on behalf of the citizens of their own province in the vacuum that exists right now regarding accountability.

So my amendment, which I will get to in a few minutes, builds on the work and the words of our committees and simply provides a timeline in which this “new regime” must be developed and brought forward. It gives two years, whereupon if nothing is done, then this shield — this fig leaf — drops away.

If optimists are right, two years is plenty of time to get the proper legislation in place. If the cynics are right, then this shield — the fig leaf — to protect the status quo and keep other regulators away would drop off and allow provincial regulators to again take up the case on behalf of their citizens who believe that they have been wronged by political parties and their data and their privacy. That’s it. It’s that simple for me.

This isn’t the only division in the budget implementation act that is troublesome. There was a host of items. We’re going to change a bunch of items in the Criminal Code. There are other items that need proper scrutiny and were put in this bill for reasons that were not always explained. In fact, I asked Minister Lametti a question about this bill, and he had an interesting comment. It was quick and off-the-cuff, but he said that he doesn’t always like what goes into a budget implementation act, and he believes sometimes that they should be full bills, but it’s not always his decision, so fair enough.

Before I read my amendment, let me just say a couple more things. I think we have a growing problem, and I think it is the Senate’s problem. Clearly, the evidence shows that we are suffering not just through financial inflation in Canada, but our budget implementation is also suffering from the same inflation — 172 pages in 2015 to 430 pages today. I believe if we don’t do something, someday we will see more situations where governments are using both good and undesirable purposes in their budget implementation acts.

So, someday — maybe it isn’t today — we’re going to have to do something about it. If this government serves its full term, and there is a deal, as we know, on confidence and support, we’ll have two more budget implementation acts, one in 2024 and again in June 2025. We should reflect between now and then and prepare to better manage these — to actually manage rather than react — rather than have I don’t know how many times by how many people in how many reports we’ve said that there were items in this bill that were inappropriate to be in this bill, yet we’re not going to do anything about it today. I’m going to propose something. I expect to lose spectacularly. That’s okay. We’re all going to get a chance to stand and begin our reflection on what we need to do here.

I believe for the utility and the sustainability of the Senate, this is an issue that we need to tackle. We need to communicate what we want to do appropriately with the House of Commons going forward, and we need to do this before the government changes. Imagine if we delay and all of a sudden we all get the religion when the government that didn’t appoint us is now in power and we decide we’re going to do something like this; we’ll look like a bunch of hypocrites. So let’s think about it between now and next year, and let’s figure out how we deal with this issue between us and the House of Commons.

Hon. Scott Tannas: Therefore, honourable senators, in amendment, I move:

That Bill C-47 be not now read a third time, but that it be amended,

(a) on page 402, by adding the following after line 5:

(b) on page 402, by adding the following after line 10: