Statement made on 22 June 2011 by Senator Joseph Day
Hon. Joseph A. Day:
Honourable senators, first I would like to thank Senator Gerstein for his comments; I would describe them as "well said." I almost had to go to the table officers to find out what the honourable senator was speaking about because this item, honourable senators, is No. 1 on the Order Paper for today. It is Bill C-3 and budget implementation. There are 12 parts to the bill. We are dealing with second reading, which is a debate in principle of what is in this particular bill.
I understand why the honourable senator might want to be brief on this item because we have had some difficulty in having the government officials and the minister come before us to tell us what they are hoping to achieve in relation to this bill. It was not until last evening that we finally had confirmation that we could have the Minister of State, Finance, come to speak to us about the bill. Honourable senators, normally we provide the courtesy of the minister coming first. The minister said that he could make 15 minutes available for us this afternoon. This bill is a piece of legislation that the government purports to want and need quickly.
Honourable senators, I will not take the time to go into the 12 different parts. However, there is one section that increases government exposure — government liability, or potential liability — for the people of Canada for $50 billion with respect to mortgages. We will need to go into that section in some considerable detail, as $50 billion is a significant matter.
Honourable senators, we are dealing with Bill C-3 at this time because all of us in this chamber agreed unanimously to allow this bill to be dealt with today rather than following our rules, which normally would provide two days' notice from first reading. This bill was received last evening, and this afternoon is less than 24 hours later. Thanks to the unanimous consent and the cooperative spirit amongst us all in this chamber, we are dealing with this bill today.
Honourable senators, if it turns out that this particular bill is voted on in second reading, I anticipate it will be referred to the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance. The Standing Senate Committee on National Finance is already authorized by this chamber to deal with this bill as a pre-study. Once the bill is sent to us, the pre-study and the bill study will merge and we will continue our study.
As had been agreed upon by our steering committee yesterday, we anticipate we will move the hearings scheduled for this evening to accommodate the minister and the government officials. We will start at 3:30 this afternoon and have four hours of hearings. We will be in a much better position after those hearings to determine what other items we may want to delve into in more detail. Those items cannot be determined until we have an overview.
Honourable senators, I spoke of one of three bills. We received this one last evening. The other two bills that the Finance Committee is being asked to deal with have not been received yet, and they are the two supply bills. One is for Main Estimates, to spend several tens of billions of dollars — honourable senators will likely be asked to approve somewhere in the range of $60 billion to $70 billion. The other is the supply bill that goes with the $2 billion in Supplementary Estimates (A).
We have been working expeditiously and cooperatively. I want to thank all the members of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance for meeting last Thursday on two different occasions during the day to try to accommodate witnesses on short notice and to try to deal with what must be dealt with in the two supply bills, which is producing a report; once the hearings are completed, we have to prepare a report. That report then must be translated, accepted by all the members of the committee, voted on, brought back to this chamber, and voted on by this chamber before we can finally dispose of those two supply bills.
Honourable senators, all that activity is happening and it can happen quickly with the cooperation of everyone on the committee. However, there are some elements over which we do not have control, and those elements are the delays with respect to translation and with respect to the Library of Parliament preparing the report.
Two bills are coming this evening. We had one last evening. There is talk in this chamber that we should be able to dispose of those bills in a day. Honourable senators, that is second and third readings on three bills. That is six speeches from the honourable senator. He is good, but it is difficult to be that good in that short a period of time. In addition, we have two reports that need to be debated before the supply bills can finally be disposed of.
We had a program that was agreed to by our committee, and we were flowing along nicely based on that program. That program would have led us to June 28 or 29 — next Tuesday or Wednesday — depending on how much this chamber wanted to shorten our normal times.
The reason for having one-day or two-day delays is to allow honourable senators to understand what is in the bill and to speak if honourable senators wish to speak. However, at the least, it allows honourable senators to understand what they are voting on when asked to vote. That is why there are delays. If we shorten the delays, we are saying: Yes, we have had a chance to study the bills; there is not a lot of other business and we are prepared to go forward with one day's notice instead of two days' notice.
Honourable senators, that is why we have these rules. We should understand what we are doing and only change the rules reluctantly.
The elephant in the room is the proposed back-to-work legislation in respect of the postal workers. If that bill had not created an umbrella over everything else, we would be working along merrily on the supply bills from the government. However, every June the same thing happens: someone tries to blame someone else for delaying, asking why can we not go home when the House of Commons goes home. We cannot go home when they do because we have work to do in this place; and we will do our work.
I know that honourable senators want to spend their summers knowing that they have done their job, which is not the same as the job in the House of Commons. We will finish this work on our normal schedule, which has been agreed upon, next Tuesday or Wednesday. In the event that we have to sit this weekend because of other proposed legislation, then we can raise our time on other matters as well, assuming that we have translation services available during the weekend and on Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, and assuming that the report can be prepared by the Library of Parliament, who will also not likely be at work on the weekend. As soon as we can get those things done, then we can bring this matter forward. Otherwise, I plead with honourable senators to allow your Finance Committee, which is working cooperatively, to continue to do a good job and bring back those three bills in the manner that honourable senators would expect.