Hon. Leo Housakos moved:

That the Senate do now adjourn.

Hon. Leo Housakos: Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is very important to highlight that there’s a pattern on the part of this government and this Prime Minister of not answering questions transparently and accountably. NSICOP is one of those things when it comes to foreign interference, Senator Woo.

Hon. Leo Housakos: Honourable senators, I wasn’t planning to speak on Item No. 31, but I think I’m compelled to do so after months and years of frustration when looking at the evolution of this chamber, particularly the Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration Committee — it is moving toward a direction where I think, just like the country, we’re spending an exorbitant amount of money very quickly, without justification. Furthermore, I also see a complete adaptation from what has been the norm in this chamber in the years that I first came here of consensus building and administering the Senate in a non-partisan, transparent, accountable and bipartisan fashion.

Now the Standing Senate Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration has been taken over, in my humble opinion, with a reflex of whatever the administration comes to us with in terms of expenditures. We acquiesce and say yes. I see a troubling trend, which is the following: If you look at the request here for Budget 2022, the allotment of money that is being requested from this institution is $126.7 million. In 2021-22, it was $121.8 million. I think you will all agree there’s a significant rise in spending, especially when you take a comparative analysis of the volume of government legislation this chamber has dealt with in the last seven years compared to the previous Parliament and government of seven years, the amount of government legislation we debated and voted on, the number of motions that we have debated and voted on and the number of private members’ bills that we’ve dealt with in this institution. More importantly, if you do an analysis of the number of studies and committee work that was done when I came here in 2009 up until 2015, there’s absolutely no comparison.

But let me tell you, if you look at the bottom line as of March 2016 — and March 2016 was the first appointment of this Trudeau government’s independent senators. Of course, we’ve seen the growth of those senators and how that experiment is evolving and continuing to evolve. We’ve all tried to make it work under difficult circumstances.

As of March 2016, the operating budget of the Senate of Canada was $74.6 million. We’ve gone, in a very short period of time, from an operating budget of $74.6 million to $126.7 million. The question I ask is — there’s nothing wrong when you see an organization spend 40% more in terms of expenditures and investments, but you also want to see the return on investment. Quite frankly, I’m concerned that that return on investment isn’t there. That’s why the official opposition — and some take difficulty with the term “official opposition,” but this chamber does have an official opposition, and thank God our role is to make sure we hold the government accountable — has been calling on the government for years and the majority of government appointees to basically take steps to wield in that spending, be responsible and be transparent.

Another concern we have — above and beyond the bottom line — is the fact that we have gone away from an operating philosophy of consensus between the government and the opposition to one where, right now at the Senate Committee on Internal Economy, we’ve seen over the last five or six years more votes on various issues whenever there’s a disagreement. In the past, if you go back again to 2015 and going back for a number of years, I didn’t see that much acrimony. At least at the time when I was there as chair, we always tried to work on consensus. So when we had a deputy chair of the opposition that didn’t agree with something, even though the majority on steering was from the government side or the majority on the Internal Economy was from the government side, we didn’t make those changes or carry on those expenditures. In the spirit of cooperation, accountability and transparency, we have to go back to those operating methodologies.

Another thing that we in the official opposition have been concerned about, and have been voicing those concerns now at Internal Economy for a number of years, is the fact that the administration seems to be taking over this institution. There’s a reflex on the part of the committee to be acquiescing to the Information Services Directorate, to finance or to the various bureaucratic elements of this institution that come to us with proposals instead of the driving force for some of these changes and decisions being senators.

It’s not incumbent on directors of departments to be going to Internal Economy and basically saying, “We think this is best for the Senate,” and Internal Economy saying, “Yes.” Once upon a time, these decisions were taken by senators, for senators and for this institution, and quite frankly, a number of us who have been around for a long time feel that these important issues aren’t being consulted and brought to the leadership of our respective groups before decisions are taken.

Case in point: We had a very important cyberattack on our institution of Parliament, a cyberattack that was carried out in the last few days against the House of Commons and this very institution called the Senate. Our servers were attacked by Russia. They were attacked on the House side and in this chamber. How many of you are aware of that? And you know why you’re not aware of it? You don’t seem to be important as shareholders of this institution. Information Services Directorate is aware of it. The administration is aware of it. I hope Internal Economy at least is aware of it.

Let me tell you, when it happened on the House side, as is normal practice for an institution that is self-governing like parliament, immediately members of Parliament were notified — their internal department of administration, the leadership, the House leaders and immediately the members of the House of Commons. That is normal operating practice of an independent parliament that controls its own destiny and is in charge because at the end of the day Internal Economy, which is given administrative authority of this institution, is given that authority by this chamber. They’re accountable to this chamber. The administrators who run the Senate, they run it on the directive of Internal Economy, and the directives also have to be approved and signed off by this institution. That’s how a legitimate parliament operates.

So, colleagues, if many of you are wondering why this particular Item No. 31 and the budget of 2023-24 have not been approved and the official opposition has not spoken before about it, this is because these are some of the concerns we have and we think they need to be addressed.

Excuse my suspicion, but there’s no surprise at the lack of transparency and accountability when we have a government like this current government. In the midst of every and any scandal, they blame anyone but themselves. They never take responsibility. We’ve seen it in the last few days with what has happened over in the other place, which has been a major blemish and an insult to the memory of all Canadians who fought during World War II. What happened was inexcusable and unacceptable, and the Prime Minister throws the Speaker under the bus instead of protocol of the Prime Minister’s Office and the government taking full responsibility. We have a Prime Minister who has been hiding for a couple of days. At least in this chamber, we have a Government Representative who isn’t hiding. He’s here on a regular basis. He takes our questions, but unfortunately, we in the opposition are equally frustrated. We never seem to get answers. We don’t get any more answers from him and the government than we do from Internal Economy on these important issues.

For example, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, or NSICOP. In the midst of these cyberattacks and in the midst of foreign interference that no one is denying — and we need to take immediate action to address these — we have a government that is missing in action. We have a process with NSICOP —

Senator Housakos: Madam Speaker, as you recognize, at the end of the day, in the middle of a debate, there has to be a legitimate point of order. Now he jumps up in order to curtail debate. There has been nothing in his point of order that calls into question the procedure of someone speaking on the item at hand during a debate. The item at hand concerns the budget and the operating methodology of the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration, or CIBA.

I’m calling into question the accountability and transparency of the majority side of this chamber and of CIBA itself. I have someone who doesn’t have a procedural issue with this point of order — he has a problem with the content of the debate — so I think I have a legitimate right for Your Honour to recognize that I may continue my debate on this particular item.