(Ottawa) Senators are unhappy with the slowness of several of their colleagues in studying the Bloc bill aimed at protecting supply management in trade negotiations. They urge them to speed up so that the legislative piece is adopted.
Bill C-282, which was sent from the House of Commons to the Senate almost a year and a half ago, is still under study in Senate committee.
What is supply management?
Bill C-282 aims to protect the supply management system by preventing the government from reducing import tariffs and changing quotas that apply to dairy products, poultry and eggs imported into Canada. This system, established in the 1970s, is based on the control of production, prices and imports of these foodstuffs. The Bloc bill was adopted by 262 MPs from all parties in the House of Commons, including the Cabinet, in June 2023. Only 2 Liberals and 49 Conservatives voted against.
Mylène Crête, The Press
“It is not up to a committee to decide the fate of this important issue,” Senator Pierre Dalphond said Thursday during a rally in support of C-282.
The sponsor of the legislative piece in the Senate, Amina Gerba, was also present at the event which took place on Parliament Hill, as well as Senator Marie-Françoise Mégie and Senator Éric Forest.
“I would like to tell you that the senators who are here and many other senators who are not here this morning are in favor of production management,” added Mr. Dalphond.
The senator believes the bill needs to get out of committee and return to the Senate floor so that all senators can vote on the issue. He said he was convinced that C-282 will receive majority support which will allow the new law to come into force.
“The Senate must carefully and seriously study all bills in complete independence from the political parties in the House of Commons, but also, it must be done quickly, because at a given moment, there are people behind it who are waiting,” he concluded.
Transpartisan support
MPs from all parties, including members of Justin Trudeau’s government, were present to show their support for C-282.
Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAuley urged senators to hurry to ratify C-282.
Her predecessor in this ministry and Minister of National Revenue, Marie-Claude Bibeau, agreed.
“We are asking senators who have already had the bill for long enough to act diligently so that we reach the end of this bill as soon as possible,” she said.
The Bloc Québécois is making the adoption of C-282 one of its conditions to avoid bringing down Justin Trudeau’s minority government between now and Christmas. He set a deadline of October 29 for his wishes to be granted.
Beyond this deadline, the Bloc threatens to begin discussions with the other opposition parties to bring down the government. Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet even said he was ready to head for an electoral campaign before then if it seemed “impossible” for the Liberals to accede to the Bloc demands.
For the moment, he believes that the timely adoption of C-282 and that of the other Bloc bill forming part of the ultimatum, C-319, remains possible.
The Bloc believes that two senators, Peter Boehm and Peter Harder, are responsible for the fact that C-282 is still stuck in the Senate. The first chairs the Senate committee studying the legislative piece and the second has spoken out against the initiative on numerous occasions.
“There, we have two senators who put themselves above the democratic choice of the entire Canadian Parliament and who say “what I think is better and it is more important”. Both are completely outside their mandate as senators, to superimpose themselves on democracy,” believes Mr. Blanchet.
“Master of our house,” says Senator Boehm
Senator Boehm denies blocking the bill. “I’m not blocking it. A single senator cannot block the bill and no one is doing it,” he said Thursday in a brief press scrum on the sidelines of a meeting of the committee he chairs.
He argued that the study plan for C-282 was approved in June, when the subject was “not as politically charged.” The Senate study is scheduled to continue beyond Oct. 29, with clause-by-clause analysis scheduled to begin in early November.
“This deadline came from the outside. That’s not part of what we do here. I understand the politics of that, but what we do is watch [C-282] in detail as we originally planned,” the chairman of the Senate committee told The Canadian Press.
He maintained that the Senate has processes independent of the House of Commons. “We are masters of our own home,” he said.
Mr. Boehm specified that the agenda dedicated to C-282 was planned based on other files that have been submitted to the committee in recent months, such as the budget implementation bill, the situation in Sudan , in Afghanistan, Gaza and Ukraine.
A witness heard Thursday by the Senate committee wants a complete and exhaustive study by the Senate on the bill. He believes that the process was rushed in the House, where C-282 obtained the support of a vast majority of elected officials from all political parties.
“Senators were appointed to provide this level of review without the handcuffs of politics and I believe providing this objective second opinion is absolutely vital considering the generational impact this will have on our trade posture,” Troy said. Sherman, senior director of government and industry relations for the Canola Council of Canada, who opposes C-282.
Other groups that testified before the Senate committee, such as the Union of Agricultural Producers, are urging the latter to give its seal of approval to the legislative measure.