Honourable senators, I rise today to voice my concerns about Bill S-4, an act that amends the Parliament of Canada Act to enshrine some of the changes Prime Minister Trudeau has imposed upon the Senate in statute.

The Parliament of Canada Act is only amended quite rarely, and I submit that the changes made in the legislation before us could alter the purpose, the effectiveness and the proud parliamentary tradition of the Senate of Canada.

Government and opposition have existed since the inception of the Canadian Senate in 1867. Each has its specific role to play in a Westminster parliamentary system: the government to enact its legislative agenda and the opposition to provide scrutiny and pushback to the government; to protect the views of minorities against the tyranny of the majority; to improve legislation for the benefit of all Canadians; and to hold the government accountable.

Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, who was also from my home province of Saskatchewan, described it this way:

If Parliament is to be preserved as a living institution His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition must fearlessly perform its functions. When it properly discharges them the preservation of our freedom is assured. The reading of history proves that freedom always dies when criticism ends. It upholds and maintains the rights of minorities against majorities. It must be vigilant against oppression and unjust invasions by the Cabinet of the rights of the people. It should supervise all expenditures and prevent over-expenditure by exposing to the light of public opinion wasteful expenditures or worse. It finds fault; it suggests amendments; it asks questions and elicits information; it arouses, educates and molds public opinion by voice and vote. It must scrutinize every action by the government and in doing so prevents the short-cuts through democratic procedure that governments like to make.

Bill S-4 doesn’t provide any additional powers for the official opposition than it has under the current Parliament of Canada Act. In fact, I believe it may devalue and diminish the official opposition’s distinct role by giving three other groups of “independent” senators powers equal to the opposition’s own: the right to be consulted on the appointment of certain officers and agents of Parliament, the entitlement to paid leadership positions for their “non-caucus” caucuses of “independent” senators and the right to change membership on the Senate’s internal administrative committee, CIBA.

When Mr. Trudeau decided to expel Liberal senators from his national caucus in 2014, he set in motion a cascade of unintended consequences. First, let’s not forget that he made this surprise move not out of a dedicated desire for Senate reform, but rather as a politically expedient way for the Liberal Party to dodge any responsibility for or association with the Senate expense scandal that had gripped the media’s attention at the time. All of a sudden, senators with years and decades of institutional, legislative and partisan knowledge were cast aside. These exiled Liberal senators were no longer positioned to advise the government with the wisdom of their cumulative parliamentary experience, and Prime Minister Trudeau’s government has suffered repeatedly for that loss.

With that one knee-jerk decision, Mr. Trudeau started to unravel 150 years of parliamentary tradition in the Senate. He appointed senators who call themselves “independent” senators, ostensibly without Liberal Party affiliations, although plenty had still made healthy donations to the Liberal Party’s maximum-donor Laurier Club, others were former Liberal candidates and executive members and several had past affiliations with the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation established by the Prime Minister’s own family.

Fast-forward to today. We now have five different caucuses in this place, and those “independent” senators have organized themselves into groups because it is completely impractical to function any other way in the political institution of the Senate. The government caucus consists of three supposedly non-affiliated senators, led by a “representative” who is really the government Senate leader by another name. Each group of independents — which we would formerly have called a caucus, except some think we can’t use terms from the “before times” anymore — has a facilitator and a liaison, new made-up terms to represent the centuries-old traditional parliamentary roles of leader and whip.

I’m still never sure which is which, but whichever one is the whip supposedly can’t “whip” anything, given that the “non‑caucus” caucus supposedly doesn’t vote en masse — except when they do, most of them more than 95% of the time with the Trudeau government. It’s a bit like we’ve all fallen down a fantastical rabbit hole.

In any case, Bill S-4 proposes to write all of this into the Parliament of Canada Act and fund it all. In fact, the total cost of the Senate has ballooned under the Trudeau government. Part of the reason for this is that previously, the Senate only funded two caucuses: government and opposition. Now, in Prime Minister Trudeau’s so-called “independent” Senate, the taxpayer has to fund five caucuses: government, opposition, Independent Senators Group, Canadian Senators Group and Progressive Senate Group. Each group already receives significant group budgets, but under Bill S-4, now all the leadership of those new caucuses will receive additional taxpayers’ dollars.

Unlike the government and the opposition, the other three caucuses don’t have a specific role in Parliament. They also claim to be comprised of individual “independent” senators who don’t hold joint caucus positions on issues or vote together. Why, then, do they each need a “liaison” who plays the role of a whip? If they have no communal policy positions, why do their leadership offices hire policy and communications staff for their caucuses — I mean, groups? Now the Trudeau government is proposing that we enshrine this in the Parliament of Canada Act. What has been 150 years of parliamentary tradition and history is being cast aside for the whims of Justin Trudeau. It’s so disheartening.

Further, the new terms used to create additional leadership positions in non-opposition caucuses are not even defined under Bill S-4 — words like, for example, “liaison,” “facilitator,” “representative” or “parliamentary group.” A liaison between whom? A “representative” to or of what? The words “facilitator” and “liaison” even seem like synonyms. Everyone knows what a leader or a whip is in the Parliament of Canada Act, because those words have been used for decades, but these new terms are confusing.

In the Senate, a key part of our job is to provide close scrutiny of laws, yet we can’t even provide proper definitions in the government legislation that governs this chamber? I find that really disappointing.

The Trudeau government’s attempt to pass Bill S-4 as soon as possible exhibits its desire to see a diminished opposition role in the Senate. It was not that long ago when the sponsor of this bill, Senator Harder, then the government leader in the Senate, self-styled as the Government Representative, prepared two different discussion papers — one in 2017, the other in 2018 — detailing the Trudeau government’s plans to destroy the opposition.

In his paper, Sober Second Thinking: How the Senate Deliberates and Decides, Senator Harder wrote that the:

. . . seismic shift in Senate membership has brought with it a spirited desire to proceed efficiently with the work that Parliament performs on behalf of Canadians and to make procedural obstruction a thing of the past.

Right — a more “efficient” Senate that makes “. . . procedural obstruction a thing of the past.” Or that makes an opposition “. . . a thing of the past,” to avoid “procedural obstructions” like debate and protest — you know, those pesky features of democracy that get in the way of a government being “efficient” sometimes.

That discussion paper seemed to echo Senator Harder’s words from the year prior. In a 2016 appearance before the Senate’s Modernization Committee, then government leader of the Senate Harder said:

In my view, in a more independent, complementary and less partisan Senate, there will no longer be an organized and disciplined government caucus, and, correspondingly, there should no longer be an organized official opposition caucus.

Given that Senator Harder is now the sponsor of the legislation before us, aiming to change the Parliament of Canada Act to reflect our “new reality,” his earlier words cause me greater concern. Senator Harder was Prime Minister Trudeau’s government leader in the Senate when that majority government tried to force through changes unilaterally to the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. It resulted in a six-week filibuster in a House committee before the Trudeau government finally had to withdraw their proposal.

I believe Bill S-4 dilutes the official opposition’s powers under the Parliament of Canada Act by giving equal powers to other groups who do not have defined roles in the Senate. It devalues the role of opposition through incremental erosion rather than a full-on attack. Ultimately, the destruction of the role of official opposition in the Senate would essentially mean that the Prime Minister is appointing his own opposition. That’s absurd, and it’s certainly not democratic.

Furthermore, under Prime Minister Trudeau’s changes to the Senate, the government Senate leader is no longer accountable to anyone. Previously, when the government leader was part of a partisan caucus and a member of cabinet, the lines of accountability were clear. The government Senate leader was fully briefed by the government and attended cabinet and national caucus meetings. He or she was accountable to the government, to cabinet and to the Prime Minister who had appointed each senator. Now, of course, the Senate government leader only attends cabinet meetings, “As appropriate and as invited,” which was Senator Harder’s fancy way of saying, “next to never.”

Senator Gold, on the other hand, tells us almost daily in Question Period that he will “make enquiries” with the government. It routinely takes six to eight months for him to get those answers and report back to senators. Why is the Senate so far down on the list of Trudeau government priorities that they can’t answer our questions in a more timely manner? It’s clear that the changes to the Senate made by Prime Minister Trudeau help his Liberal government dodge accountability, perhaps explaining why the Trudeau government wants to write these changes into the Parliament of Canada Act now.

Before Prime Minister Trudeau came into power, the government leader in the Senate actually gave substantial speeches on most government legislation before the chamber, in addition to the sponsor’s speech. This gave senators the opportunity to question and debate the government’s position on bills. Now that job is largely left to the sponsors of bills, who ostensibly have no link to the government and no real ability to answer on the government’s behalf.

But even without the support of the government’s information, the independent senators who sponsor bills are expected to toe the line. Often, those “independent” senators carry the Trudeau government’s water in making last-minute amendments to government legislation at clause by clause at a Senate committee . Most of these amendments aren’t coming from the desks of independent senators — they’re coming directly from the Trudeau government. A lot of these amendments wouldn’t be necessary if this government legislation had been properly drafted in the first place. But instead, the number of amendments is touted by the Trudeau government as proof that the new “independent” Senate is more productive. I don’t think so. All of these changes are diminishing the accountability of the government and the effectiveness of the Senate. But that was the point, wasn’t it? Fewer obstructions to stand in the way of a Trudeau PMO determined to have its way.

Honourable senators, the traditional Westminster parliamentary system of a government and opposition is foundational to the Senate. Constantly chipping away at the foundation will lead a structure to fall. As parliamentarians, we bear the responsibility for preserving our democratic traditions in this chamber for the benefit of all Canadians. Let’s use our sober second thought to do that. Thank you.

Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?

Some Hon. Senators: Agreed.

An Hon. Senator: On division.

(Motion agreed to and bill read third time and passed, on division.)