Either way, he would want to do it by himself.

Honourable senators, I have several points I’d like to make about this debate. I’ll address three points that have been raised by colleagues in the debate.

The first point I would like to address is one that was raised in comments by Senator Housakos. He says that if you look at the vote record and debate in this place, it’s only normal that government-appointed senators reflect the view of the government more often.

I want to address that because it is fundamentally a myth. In some sense, I’m addressing this on behalf of the ISG, and that’s not because they can’t defend themselves. They absolutely, fundamentally can. I know that, after three and a half years of being in a position, which I first held in the history of the world. Nobody else has ever held that position. There’s only one other person who can begin to appreciate the perspective I had, which is unique because of that, and that’s my colleague from Alberta, Senator LaBoucane-Benson. As you can see her becoming more and more serious day after day, you understand exactly how important, significant and unique this particular perspective is.

I want to address that point because it is often used by very limited numbers of people in this Senate — about 22 Conservatives — who, it seems to me, are the only people in the whole world that are as obsessed with whether or not the ISG are actually independent. Nobody else raises their interest to that level — because there is an argument to be gained on behalf of the Conservative senators who have a very legitimate view of how this chamber and the Senate should function. They have absolutely every right to argue it and press it wherever they can. But I’m pressing back because it is not true that somehow the ISG is, from my experience — vivid, visceral, day-to-day, intense — in any way, shape or form, beholden to the government.

I want to address it because I don’t think it’s fair to the ISG that this should be continuously raised when it’s not true. And I don’t think it’s fair because it betrays the progress and the success of this reform, which has been very well served by the appointment of independent senators to this chamber.

I know for a fact that the Conservatives — and the ISG knows this as well — will vote to defeat government legislation. It is fundamentally consistent with their view, and a traditional view of how chambers like this work. It’s true; it’s an empirical fact.

If, on the other hand, we understand that it’s very risky and not entirely appropriate at all that unelected senators should defeat government legislation, that creates a very interesting formula. On the one hand, you have a hard place, called the Conservative senators, who are almost always going to vote against government legislation to defeat it. And on the other hand, you have this other hard place, a rock, which says we have to be very careful about defeating legislation.

Confronted by that, I believe that the independent senators have continuously made a decision that was responsible and appropriate. They have said, knowing that we’re going to be facing a block of negative votes, we can’t take the risk that this government legislation will be defeated. They vote for government legislation because of that conundrum. It’s not that they all want to support government legislation all the time, by any means, believe me. I have had infinite numbers of sleepless nights worried about that. Many of them will tell you that I’ve over-worried it and, in fact, bothered them because I’ve been quite intense in approaching them and making that very specific argument.

Second, we should hire some PhD graduate student to do a study on the nature of the speeches from the ISG on every one of those government bills. I bet you will find almost no one in the ISG — Peter, Diane and I were practically the only people that spoke unabashedly, positively, about government legislation. If you assessed what was said in this Senate about government legislation, you will find that almost nobody is positive about government legislation, for different reasons; the Conservatives because they don’t like it, and the ISG probably because — while they give much of it a positive pass — they focus on those places that they deem to be inadequate so that they can approve it. The outcome is in Hansard. Add it up. You’ll find there are almost no overwhelmingly positive speeches about government legislation.

So it is not true. And the metrics being used in Senator Housakos’s statement — those two metrics, the voting record and debate — need to be further analyzed because they do not indicate the outcome that those who want to support the old, tired, archaic method of structuring this place continue to make because it strengthens their position.

A second statement that was made was the concern — and it was made well by Senator Martin, the deputy leader of the Conservative caucus — that this opposition should get some sort of preference in the number of questions they get to ask and those shouldn’t be proportional. That is certainly consistent with the theory of how this place should be run. We can solve that problem. There is plenty of time to ask all the questions we need to ask if we refine the way in which those questions are asked.

Questions are almost statements. Day after day, we listen to long preambles to questions, which are statements. We confronted that problem in the Alberta legislature when I was first elected. I think there had been only two members of the opposition for a number of years prior to the breakthrough in 1986. Those were the days. It was overwhelming. I don’t know how many of us there were, probably 20 or 22 opposition people, who were inclined to ask questions, and lots of them.

So very quickly, we had to come to some accommodation because there wasn’t enough time in Question Period. What did we do? As a house, we agreed that you would get three discrete, specific sentences in the preamble to your first question. If you went over that, the Speaker would cut you off; bang, you’re done. They had a button they would press and that would be it. Then you would get one sentence to preamble your subsequent supplementary questions. Let me tell you, you get way better questions.

Half the time I listen to these preambles, I’m drifting off after two or three sentences anyway. You lose the thread. You want to get a punchy, specific idea of what you’re going to ask and then, bang, ask it. The ideal is not to give them so much that they can answer an infinite number of possibilities. You want to get them in a preamble in a way that they have to answer what you want answered. You’ve already indicated that there is only one answer. It doesn’t matter what they answer because it’s embarrassing already for them.

If I can say this tongue-in-cheek, one reason why the Conservatives want to limit Question Period and not have cabinet ministers — you think you would be over the top having cabinet ministers — is that it’s not working out very well for you. If you ask effective questions of cabinet ministers, you would love to have them here. But if you’re not getting the results you want on TV, it may be that you have to recalibrate and ask better questions. I would say if you focus it to three sentences, one sentence and subsequent supplementary preambles, you will have effective questions. You will say, “Whoops, never mind, forget this motion, we want to have cabinet ministers. Can we have them three times a week?” Sure, because I think that’s what will happen.

Finally, I was encouraged to hear the clear statement by Senator Woo that said we believe all senators are equal. It’s true. If we are going to have the reformed Senate that so many of us want, it is fundamentally, irrevocably important that you don’t have to be in a group to get special privileges. That’s not to say there shouldn’t be some leadership positions to help run it and a budget to do it. Absolutely, no problem with organizing groups. But you can’t say that you get some special privilege because you’re a member of a group and we don’t get it because we’re not. Because that is fundamental to one of the things we’re trying to reform, which is fear and favour — whipping, to use a horrible word — or discipline to get some kind of result that you want.

So if I have to ask some other group if I can please, pretty please, have one of your positions on a committee, that’s not right. And we’re falling into that same rabbit hole where you get some privilege because you’re a member of a group. That is fundamentally wrong if we want to reform the Senate the way it needs to be reformed.

I would say there are 13 unaffiliated senators. If you put 13 as a percentage of 105, do you know how many chairs unaffiliated senators get? They get two chairs of two committees, and they should. Anybody in here who believes this is real reform should make sure that the unaffiliated senators get two chairs — period.

You can follow that down a little bit further to what positions we should get on committees and so on. But if it comes down to your having to be in some group to get some favour, we’re not where we need to be in reform, and we have made huge progress.

I leave that with you, and I thank you for the chance to say it.

Would Senator Mitchell take a question?

Do I have to? Okay, I will, sure.

Two sentences.

Thank you for your benevolence, Senator Mitchell. Senator Mitchell, I thank you for being courageous enough to confess on the floor that you’re the impediment to why I assume members aren’t as independent as they want to be. Because the truth of the matter is an 86% voting record, regardless of the reasons — and you can justify them as eloquently as you like — is still an 86% voting record.

You’ve touched upon a number of issues in your speech but nothing in regard to the actual sub-motion that you were debating, and that is, at the end of the day, we are all equal in this place. We’re equal before the rules; we all ask questions.

I have two questions for you. When you were in opposition and there was a majority, a Senate appointed by a Conservative Prime Minister, how tolerant, in all honestly, Grant, would you have been if 40% or 50% of the questions during QP were being asked by senators appointed by that Prime Minister? I’d like an honest answer as to what your reaction would actually be.

Furthermore, in the spirit of equality, how is equality somehow hindered by the fact that we take away the final decision of which minister comes before QP from the Government Representative and just give it over to the opposition leader in the Senate? I think it would be a little bit more respective of the principled fashion upon which QP is supposed to work in a Westminster Parliament.

Thanks. With respect to your first point about the 86% and how that somehow colours or is a metric, I meant to mention that it isn’t only the ISG — it was unfair of me not to mention this point, and I’m going to mention it — that believes you cannot defeat government legislation. It is dangerous to do that and could precipitate a constitutional crisis. It’s also true that at critical moments in that session, the GRO, the government relations officer, was very grateful — I don’t want to put you on the spot here — for support we got from the Conservative caucus to make sure some bills weren’t defeated at critical moments. So it isn’t as though I don’t appreciate — and I want to say very clearly that the Conservative members of this Senate also love this place deeply, and they appreciate it and respect it. Their arguments are coming from a very good place; it’s just a different view of how this place might work. Thank you for that.

It isn’t just endemic to one perspective or one group. There is a consensus about that.

Your idea of how upset I would have been about not getting our fair share of questions is a really good point. That was under a completely different system. If I were concerned that Conservatives or the people who were always on the side of government got all kinds of questions that were puffball and didn’t, in fact, hold their government to account because they were of the same stripe, I would be very concerned about that.

But I’ve sat in this session, under this reform process, for about four years. I don’t think I can remember any questions from an ISG member that was a softball question to the government — quite the contrary. I would be concerned if I didn’t feel the questions that were being asked were holding the government to account. I don’t think that’s a problem here. We do not have people who are beholden to government.

It’s interesting that early on, a number of times — not so much lately — the Conservative members have said that, well, of course, people are beholden to the person who appoints them, so once Mr. Harper went, you became more independent. That’s a horrible indictment of your colleagues. It also conjures up a rule that was fundamental to how we operated in the Alberta legislature, which was that you couldn’t impugn the motives of another member. We do that quite a bit here and it’s not right to do that, and I think we should entrench that in our rules as well.

So I think that in 30 minutes — three sentences, question, one sentence, question — you would get plenty of questions. You’ll find that members of the ISG would ask questions that you would want to ask of the government to hold them accountable, and it’s embarrassing because they do it all the time. And do you know what? They do it extremely well.