Senator Cordy: Honourable senators, rule 12-2(3) says:

Except as otherwise provided, once the report is adopted by the Senate, Senators appointed to the standing committees and the standing joint committees shall serve for the duration of the session.

Senator Moncion, this rule was followed when there were just two political parties in the Senate. It has only been very recently that people have suggested that this would not follow, that there would be an exception notwithstanding this rule, and that senators would lose their seats on a committee once they left the group.

Senator Cordy: You’re absolutely right. It’s interesting, because I looked at that section and I think it’s something that we should be looking at very closely and examining. I would certainly be open to exploring a need to change this rule. Sometimes what happens, Senator Tannas, is people are taken off a committee for no other reason than they’re tied up with two committees meeting at the same time, which sometimes happens in December and in June. Then the Senate is not sitting; they come back and they discover that they’re still on it.

I think we ran into that, where people were replaced, and then Parliament had been prorogued. They were called back to sit, the person who had taken the place of the original member was still on the committee, and the practice with prorogation was that you couldn’t switch. It had to be the people who sat at the last meeting while Parliament was in session.

So you’ve raised a really good point. I have my notes from when I was looking over rule 12-5, and the comment I jotted down was that I would certainly be open to exploring a change to this rule. I think the Rules Committee should be looking at it because research shows that there are ways to facilitate needed replacements and require the consent of senators.

I haven’t looked at what they do in London in the House of Lords. I haven’t looked at what they do in Australia. I was simply looking at the rule that we have, but I hope that you would be open to it. I certainly would be open to having the Rules Committee examine rule 12-5. Thank you for raising that.

[Translation]