Hon. Brent Cotter: Honourable senators, I rise to speak as the critic on Bill C-280, An Act to amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (deemed trust — perishable fruits and vegetables).

I realize I have as much as 45 minutes today. I want to tell you that my speech is 21 pages long. I could call out the pages as I go, if you like.

I want to start on page 0. When I came to the Senate, I confess that I was surprised that I had, almost by accident and by experience in my career, bumped into many of the issues that we are addressing here, and I used to sit over in that corner in the nosebleed seats. I was there with former senator Judith Keating. We would compare notes on, remarkably, the kinds of things that we knew and perhaps didn’t even know that we knew.

One of the things I learned from former Senator Keating during those conversations was why she had asked Senator Percy Mockler to be her sponsor. I am sorry that he is not here at the moment. Some of you who are new to the Senate may know that former Senator Keating unfortunately passed away after only serving here for a couple of years. The temerity of the question was on my part, to ask her why she had asked Senator Percy Mockler to be her sponsor. She told me the reason was that, although she may not have agreed with everything that Senator Mockler stood for, she wanted to be a senator just like Percy Mockler.