Senator Housakos: Again, government leader, the tradition and history of this place are that the government leader, especially on bills and motions as important as this, indulge the Senate and take questions. I take exception with a number of the things you said in your speech. If you don’t give the opposition an opportunity to address them with questions and answers, again, it creates that frustration that we have in this place.

I just want to deal with a couple of issues. You brought up how the opposition uses adjournments in order to stifle things. Every group in this place, when they want to stifle something, slow something down, take their time with it or negotiate it, take an adjournment on motions. It is nothing new. The government does it, the opposition does it, and, of course, since 2016, all groups do it.

The other thing is that I love the fact that you’re actually starting to pay attention to Pierre Poilievre’s videos. But what I take exception with is that you think it is somewhat partisan that Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the opposition in the House of Commons, is publicly involved in a public debate opposing a government bill that Rachael Thomas, the critic on Bill C-11 in the House of Commons is on video —

I am asking a question, Your Honour, but I would like to give him some context. Colleagues, again, there is a tradition in this place of allowing some context in questions and answers.

The government leader said that Pierre Poilievre and Rachael Thomas in the other place were out there campaigning against Bill C-11. Are you equally offended when Prime Minister Trudeau and Minister Rodriguez put out their videos or when they defend in the public arena and talk about how Bill C-11 is a good thing? Are you equally offended?

Hon. Leo Housakos: Thank you for your speech, Senator Harder.

I was very skeptical about Bill C-11 in terms of the government having an objective to predetermine winners and losers. In the case of Bill C-18, I understand the objective, and I think it’s about fairness and respecting copyright and content. But I still have some concerns and I’m skeptical if it actually does achieve that.

What would you say to critics who will argue that the web actually just magnifies and amplifies the work of those content producers? When a journalist at Quebecor or CBC posts to Twitter or Facebook, they do it because they want to amplify and get as much reach as possible for their work. Without those platforms, they wouldn’t be getting that reach.

What happens now when we jump into an Uber to go to dinner tonight and, once we get to the restaurant, the Uber driver says, “I also want a percentage of the bill tonight that you spend at that restaurant, because if it wasn’t for my platform, you wouldn’t be having this exchange?” Or, regarding this wonderful speech you just gave, when you post it on Twitter or when the Senate puts it on Facebook, are we entitled to ask for royalties from all those platforms when we’re actually using those platforms in order to propel our work?

Senator Harder: Thank you for your question, senator.

If I can take your analogy, the Uber driver who will take us to dinner would be worthy of a portion of that expense if he were providing the dinner. He’s not.

Senator Housakos: Senator Cardozo, congratulations. I think that is your maiden speech in the Senate. There’s a lot in your speech that we can dissect, but I’d like to just look at one aspect, where you talked about how popular Bill C-11 is in Quebec. I think Bill C-11 is popular in Quebec among those who are fans of cable and the traditional broadcasting model of doing business. It’s very unpopular among streamers, bloggers, Twitter users and all those young Quebecers living on these new platforms.

The reason those new platforms are so popular among francophones is because they don’t get narrowed into just a few million francophones who listen to their capacity to develop their art and culture. They get to broadcast around the world to millions and hundreds of millions of francophones.

Hon. Leo Housakos: Thank you for your speech. I’m quite open to the idea of sending this bill to a committee like the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. I am open to finding a solution to this terrible situation. As you so eloquently said in your speech, the situation in Xinjiang demands draconian measures, and it was sad to see that this chamber chose not to recognize the existence of a genocide in Xinjiang last year. Even worse, it is sad to see that our government will not recognize that fact.

Do you agree that now is the time to act as quickly as possible, as a country and as a government?

Senator Housakos: Thank you for that very thoughtful speech. Again, it was well articulated.

Senator Tannas, I hope we’re still friends after I ask the question, but we’ve done a fair amount of naval-gazing in this place. We’re always looking at the Rules. Of course, I’m not against the idea of constant improvement. Nothing is static. We should review the Rules.

However, I’ve been here a number of years, and at the end of the day, we have rules to give certain advantages to the government. We have rules to protect the role of the opposition. I’ve looked at the last few parliaments. Have there been any examples where we haven’t found a consensus to make sure the opposition’s voices are heard? Are there any examples where this chamber hasn’t respected the agenda and timelines of the government in order to respond to important issues, be it during COVID or what-have-you?

It seems that every time we engage in debate here, we need to fix something. I listened to your speech carefully, and it doesn’t seem that the proposition that we have here is fixing anything. Is it really fixing a problem that exists?

Second, we also have time allocation, which the government, of course, has hailed as a badge of honour due to the fact they’ve never used it, which it is, because it also indicates that we have found consensus among leadership, even though we’ve added so many leadership groups.

Would you agree that we’re not really fixing anything at this particular point with this motion?

Senator Housakos: Government leader, I think you will agree that the country has never been at a lower stage in our history than it has been over the last few weeks. I listened to your speech very attentively. My questions are as follows. Would you not agree that we have had many protests in the history of this country, many protests that were not on the scale of this but a lot more violent than this? And yet we’ve never seen any prime minister refuse to dialogue, refuse to speak to these frustrated Canadian citizens, Canadian taxpayers. On the contrary, instead of speaking to them, he spoke down to them.

Would you also agree that it is the responsibility of the Prime Minister to be measured when there are frustrated mobs out in the streets who are not happy with their government, not to call them names, not to stoke the flames of division, as he seems to do on a regular basis? I have been around politics for a long time. I have seen many prime ministers and governments use wedge issues, but I have never in my life, in my 37 years of active politics, seen a prime minister double-down, triple-down, go to any limits rather than to calm the situation.

At the end of the day, and I saw it in your speech today, we have seen the Prime Minister on a couple of occasions call protesters in this country — taxpayers, Canadian citizens, marchers with those swastikas — defenders of Nazism. He has used those terms. He stood up in the House of Commons and he actually proclaimed to a child of Holocaust survivors, a member of Parliament, duly elected, that she is a defender of the swastika. He said that in the House of Commons. She marches. You and the opposite benches who “stand with people who wave swastikas.”

I’m allowed in debate, as you know, Senator Downe, to make my point.

Senator Downe: You are up on a question.