Senator Housakos: That is an excellent question, Senator Dalphond.

First of all, as you know, our small group of Conservatives speaks for the majority of Canadians, since we won the majority of votes in the last election. This is an important vote, and we still won more votes than the party that was in power. We won more votes than the current government in two consecutive elections.

It goes without saying that even a democratic parliamentary system is perfectly imperfect. I would also point out that the government is of course elected based on its electoral platform. However, we must not forget that in any election platform, like the Liberal Party platform, it is one thing to say that the Broadcasting Act will be reformed. But the details of the reform process aren’t included in the election platform. The details come later, in a bill, and if there’s any time for the upper house to do its job, it’s to study all the details. An election platform is very general.

Furthermore, I would never argue that we should support a bill simply because reviewing it was part of a political party’s platform, since that is entirely contrary to the idea of the independence of this great parliamentary institution.

[English]

Hon. Leo Housakos: Thank you, senator, for the excellent question.

The committee itself will decide when to start its work. It is at the important stage of planning its future activities, and as the senators who are members of several committees in this institution know, we can’t move forward without a good plan, so we need time. As you know, the steering committee hasn’t reached a consensus yet, and the work is ongoing. The committee will start by establishing a plan before going any further.

[English]

That is the tradition when it comes to work at the committee level, and as we all know, colleagues, committees have a degree of independence in this place. They take guidance from this chamber. Of course, I recognize that this is the ultimate superior authority when it comes to giving direction to committees, but as has been expressed over a number of weeks and months in the chamber by colleagues like Senator Cordy and Senator Downe, committees are masters of their own destiny. So we are going to allow the Transport and Communications Committee the leeway that they need in order to come up with a plan, to come up with directives and try to follow, of course, the guidelines that have been given by this chamber.

The last time I checked, the motion that you have questioned about has no particular date or timeline. The government has given us the flexibility to do the robust study that needs to be done on such an important bill.

[Translation]