Hon. Joan Fraser (Acting Deputy Leader of the Opposition):

Honourable senators, a number of you will be aware that, over the years, I have expressed grave reservations about the wisdom of a policy of broadcasting in total the proceedings of this chamber. Some honourable senators may recall that the other day, after Senator Andreychuk's well-founded remarks, I also expressed reservations about adopting a policy giving to some outside party the ability to select certain portions of our proceedings for broadcast.

I have since had an opportunity to speak with Senator Segal and with some senators on our side who are in support of his motion. I am still not in support of his motion as written, but I think we can do some serious work that might, in the end, be of benefit to the Senate and to the people of Canada whom we represent and who pay for us.

I remain very skeptical about the utility of televising our proceedings for quite a number of reasons. The standard one is that, in my view, televising legislative chambers changes behaviour in those chambers. It is all very well for us to say we are different, that we would not be like everybody else. We would be like everybody else; we would find ourselves quite quickly playing to the cameras, some of us more so than others. Even those of us who did not play to the cameras would find themselves besieged by those helpful political advisers who abound in every party: "Oh, you are not coming across well on camera, senator. You must change the way you dress. You must change the way you stand and speak."

Honourable senators, we would find ourselves encouraged to cluster around the speaker of the moment the way they do in the other place, in order to give the impression that a vast crowd is hanging on the speaker's every word. One effect of that would be to diminish the spontaneity of debate because, as soon as you are not seated in your own seat in this chamber, you cannot rise.

One of great advantages of this chamber is that it does allow for spontaneity in debate. One of the ways it does that, as we all know, is by calling, every day, every item on the Order Paper. I repeat, that allows for spontaneity in debate, but it does not sound that way to the uninitiated. When every item on the Order Paper is called, as we have just heard, there are endless recitals of "stand," which sounds to the uninitiated as if we do not care about doing our job. As we know, that is not true.

Also, the presence of television cameras changes the behaviour, not only of senators, but of other persons. This can be truer in committees, but it would sometimes even be true here. In committees, this would notably refer to witnesses.

I was very interested last night to hear someone who has significant experience in appearing before parliamentary committees and who certainly seemed to have no lack of self-confidence say that when cameras are present, he becomes nervous. Believe me, it has been my experience that if people know they will be on television, most of them do become nervous. We do not want them to be nervous; we want them to be focused on the task at hand, which is assisting the committee in its work, rather than thinking, "How will I look on television and will my mother-in-law call me to say that I should have worn the tie she gave me for Christmas?"

Honourable senators will gather from these remarks that I have a broad streak of Luddite in my character; it is broad but not overwhelming. It seems to me that somewhere in the concept behind this motion there is something we should explore. We should explore it, not in the context of television, which is old media and which is limited. It is limited in time apart from anything else. How many of us have had to suspend committee hearings because the television cameras had to leave? That is not a good way to run a Senate.

We should be exploring the Internet because it is not limited in time or capacity. On the Internet, it would be possible, at very little cost, to run gavel-to-gavel coverage of all our proceedings in this chamber and in committee, in English, in French and in the floor language. That would be a great advantage to anybody who cared enough to whistle up the necessary portion of the Internet.

However, on the Internet, we could also do what I gather is the intent of Senator Segal and those who support his motion, but which is not particularly clear in the motion as worded; that is, group debates on specific items of business. For example, on a budget bill, we could have, in one stream on the Internet, everything connected with that bill from the moment it was presented in the chamber, through every debate, through committee hearings, back here and all the way through to its passage, including standing votes and the record of who voted which way. We could do that with every subject because the wonder of the Internet is that its capacity is unlimited. If we were to make that selection and editing were to be done, I would have no problem because it would be a complete record of our proceedings; all sides would be aired.

This may sound weird, but I actually think we would have much less difficulty with the transformation of behaviour on the Internet than we would on television because the audience for any one event on the Internet is likely to be smaller and certainly more focused on the topic than on the mere magic of a parliamentary chamber at work.

There would be a lot of critics who would like to go after us at work. Senator Brown is familiar with many of them, I am sure. I think some of that would be diminished if we were to use the Internet. However, in order to do this, we would have to go back and do a thorough study and overhaul of the way this chamber uses the Internet.

Those who have had the good fortune — maybe not — to consult the Senate website will know that it is a very awkward beast, that you can only find it by going into the general parliamentary website, which is totally concerned with the other place and not with this place. Therefore, before we moved to the kind of really complete coverage that I think might be useful, we would need to have established our own proper full-scale website. We would need to have the staff to do it properly, none of which we have now; and of course, we would need to be familiar with the budgetary implications of that type of coverage.

All of these things are well worth exploring. I do not, however, think they are clearly addressed in the motion before us, which, as I read it, essentially says we are going to do this on television and let us get on with it. I appreciate Senator Segal's impatience.

I think the motion needs such drastic rewording that I do not propose to suggest an amendment. I urge its proposer to rethink it and come back to this chamber with the kind of motion that I have outlined. I cannot support this motion as written. I might well find myself supporting something along the lines that I have discussed.

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