Senator Yuen Pau Woo

Honourable colleagues, I would like to start by thanking Senator Gold for introducing this motion and, indeed, for making the conditions possible for the motion to be introduced.  I would also like to thank Senator Lankin for consulting with senators about these rule changes and advocating for them.

As Rohinton Mistry would say, it has been “such a long journey”.  From the Senate Special Committee on Modernization to the work of Senators Massicotte and Green, to motions in this chamber from Senator Tannas and myself, to the reports of the Senate Standing Committee on Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament, it has been a long journey indeed.

The compass for that long journey has been and continues to be the Supreme Court reference on the Senate of Canada in 2014, which was requested by then Prime Minister Stephen Harper.  In it, the justices reaffirmed that the Senate should not be a carbon copy of the House of the Commons, but that it should be “a thoroughly independent body which could canvass dispassionately the measures of the House of Commons”. The justices went on to say: “The framers sought to endow the Senate with independence from the electoral process to which members of the House of Commons were subject, in order to remove Senators from a partisan political arena that required unremitting consideration of short-term political objectives”.

The Supreme Court reference is the critical context for Prime Minister Trudeau’s decision to cut loose Liberal senators from his party in the House of Commons and to appoint members who are not tied to any political caucus.    

This is important to remember because the Senate circa 2015 had to do something fundamentally different if it was to try to restore some credibility and legitimacy with Canadians, after the sordid years of the Senate expenses scandal.  The Supreme Court had already explained why a triple-E Senate, which was the question put to the justices by Mr Harper, could not be realized solely by the actions of the Federal parliament.

That is why the move to a more independent, less partisan Senate in 2016 was, in my view, the most profound reform in the history of our institution.  Make no mistake, this motion is about protecting that historic reform.  In this respect, it is ironic that the folks who are against the motion come from a party that has most loudly championed reform of the Senate. 

Whatever the motivation of Mr Trudeau in proposing this change, it should be seen as a lifeline for our institution to rebuild its credibility and legitimacy with the Canadian public.  The polling speaks for itself:  A Nanos survey commissioned by our colleague Senator Dasko in 2021 showed that 76 percent of Canadians agree with the new merit-based appointment process and only three percent want to return to the previous model of partisan appointments.  Indeed, 80 percent of the public describe the fact that “new senators sit as independent members and are not active in a political party” as a “good change” for the Senate.

Even so, colleagues, the same poll showed that nearly a quarter of respondents believe the Senate to be “ineffective/pointless”.  This is not a statistic to be proud of and while we may be comforted by the reality that the Senate is not about to be abolished anytime soon, you can be sure that if that number creeps up, the calls for abolition will get louder.

This is the larger context in which we are discussing today’s rule changes.  The motion says to Canadians that we are actively working on improving our institution by making it less partisan and more distinct from the House of Commons, as the framers of our constitution intended.

Colleagues who are against the motion, on the other hand, want to turn back the clock.  We know that is true of Conservative senators, but there are revanchist Liberals and would-be Liberals who also pine for the “good old days” of a partisan duopoly, each tied to the fortunes and dictates of the corresponding political caucus in the House of Commons.  They see the role of a senator as advancing the objectives of the party as defined by the PM or the leader of the party in the House, and they will happily toggle from Government to Opposition and back again, election after election, one day extoling the importance of opposing everything the government does and the next day decrying attempts by the new opposition to counter everything they do. 

This is of course the hoary argument we heard last week from our Conservative colleagues about the sanctity of “opposition” and why only they deserve that appellation.  It boils down to the assumption that senators affiliated to a political party are the only ones capable of criticizing government legislation.  It is not only a daffy argument, but also insulting to the rest of us who every day of every week are looking at the bills we get from the House of Commons and are trying to do our duty as Senators to scrutinize those bills and make them better.  Everyone of us.  Not just the handful of folks who have anointed themselves as more blessed than the others.

If you think this is a bit harsh, look at Report #5 from the Standing Senate Committee of Rules, Procedures, and the Rights of Parliament. It documents that Conservative senators believe their group is more equal, more worthy, and more deserving than other recognized parliamentary groups. On that basis, the Conservative members on the Rules committee refused to accept rule changes that the overwhelming majority of members on that committee supported.  The proposed rule changes discussed over many months in the Rules committee are by the large the same ones in this motion.

The Conservatives have been propagating the fiction that they are the “official opposition in the Senate” even though there is no such term in our rules or in the Parliament of Canada Act. And yet, we heard Conservative senators use the term in debate on this very motion — indeed the very senators who claim to be arch defenders of parliamentary practice and tradition.

There is a certain desperation in this deliberate distortion of our nomenclature, but it is made worse by the conceit that the way in which Conservatives carry out the work of “opposing” in the Senate is superior how non-partisan senators do it. And what is that allegedly superior style of opposition? Let me quote Senator Plett, who in response to my question on a speech he made on the income tax act had this to say:

I am making a speech that is contrary to what the government is doing, and I don’t need to defend that. 

Well, Senator Plett is correct that he doesn’t need to defend a speech that was full of internal contradictions and non-sequiturs. It is certainly his right to be contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, but colleagues, that is NOT what is meant by sober second thought and that surely is not the form of “opposition” we want to demonstrate for Canadians.  Conservative supporters will of course cheer on Senator Plett for being obdurate and Liberal supporters will cheer on any Liberal senators who behave similarly on the other side of the debate.  But is this any way to run an Upper House?  If you think it is, you have just boosted the number of Canadians who say the Senate is ineffective or pointless.

One of the favourite arguments used by senate duopolists is that the test of being a true opposition member is in how you vote on government bills.  By this measure, senators who vote for government legislation, even amended bills, cannot be part of the opposition. This is also a daffy argument, and I must say even some independent senators are taken in by it. 

When we have voice votes and the opposition cries “on division”, do you think it means they oppose the bill?  If it did, why don’t they call for a standing vote each time?  The reason is that “on division” allows them to have the deniability of not supporting a bill, and of not opposing it.   They want to have cake and to eat it as well.  In fact, we have even seen the spectacle of Conservative senators standing to vote for a government bill after having spoken against it, because they suddenly realized that the bill might be defeated by a plurality of independent senators.  This was the famous vote on C-83 concerning “Structured Intervention Units” in 2019.  Look it up.

Or consider the following thought experiment:  Suppose the majority of independent senators consistently voted against government bills.  This, by the way, should strike terror in the hearts of Conservative colleagues who are hoping for a change in government after the next election.  If that happened, they would surely cry foul play because . . . and here is the clincher – they allowed government bills to go through while they were in opposition.  In any case, imagine if in fact a Senate filled with independent members consistently voted down government bills.  What do you think that would do for our legitimacy?  Would Canadians break out in joyful support for the Senate and cheer us on to keep doing the same? Daffy, right?

The Conservatives pretend to be the true opposition in the Senate but their goal in doing so is to become the government after the next election.  That is of course the prerogative of political partisans, but it is not reflective of today’s Senate of Canada which consists overwhelmingly of non-partisan members. Whereas Conservative senators are opposition members for only as long as their party is not in power, the rest of us will remain independent of the government whichever party is in charge. How can we take seriously the claim that the “real” opposition in the Senate is the group that will ditch that title as soon as it has the opportunity to do so? Daffy.

Let me take on another hoary argument that was trotted out again in last week’s debate by Senator Martin.  It is that things are working fine the way they are.  That even without rule changes, the Senate can accommodate senators who don’t belong to a partisan caucus.  That the Conservatives have been willing to grant speaking time and committee seats and travel privileges to non-partisan senators and that, goodness gracious, the leaders and facilitators of recognized parliamentary groups are even consulted on some important decisions concerning the Senate.  This, colleagues, is the argument of arrogance and noblesse oblige.  It is the “Let them eat cake” argument.  I will grant the Conservatives this:  If their idea of the Upper Chamber is that it should be aristocratic, as in the House of Lords, where there are different classes of members and that they belong to the more privileged class, then they are indeed being true to an idee fixe of the Westminster model. 

But that is not the kind of Westminster Upper House I want for Canada.  Non-partisan senators will not stand for eating cake or relying on the largesse of 14 senators for our rights and privileges. Because you can sure about one thing:  The Conservative opposition to this motion will not stop here.  Their leader in the House is clear that he wants to return to a partisan Senate, and I am sure there are Liberals who are also wistful for the bad old days of duopoly.  There will be forces in both parties that will want to roll back the more independent senate of today, to marginalize the role of parliamentary groups that are not affiliated to a political caucus, and to return to the cozy arrangements of alternating government and opposition -- doing little more than mimicking their counterparts in the Other Place. 

From the outside, the rule changes proposed in this motion may seem trivial.  And it is true that much of this motion simply codifies the current practice.  But the implications of not passing the motion are very serious indeed.  If we entrench the privileged position of a political caucus that styles itself as the Opposition – any political caucus -- we will allow for the erosion of the rights of other parliamentary groups and their members, and that could lead to the demise of the independent senate experiment.  As it is, this motion does not go far enough.  It does not go far enough in the allocation of equal speaking time for leaders and facilitators.  It does not go far enough in equalizing the powers of ex-officio members of committees. And it does not go far enough in redefining the meaning of opposition.

For those of us who believe in the importance of a more independent, less partisan Senate, there is more work to do.  After all, the point of a more independent, less partisan Senate is not just about how we do our work and what makes us feel good; it is much more so about the credibility and legitimacy of our institution for generations to come.  I am not so naïve to think that a Senate made up entirely of independent members will in and of itself make Canadians love the Upper House, but I am sure that a return to partisan duopoly will do the opposite.  Let’s pass this motion quickly and use it as the basis from which we can further modernize the Senate of Canada. 

Thank you.