Liberal senators are fuming after a deal between Conservative and Independent members of the upper house last night stalled a vote on a proposed ban on whale and dolphin captivity once again.

Tabled in December 2015 by former Liberal Sen. Wilfred Moore, Bill S-203, Ending the Captivity of Whales and Dolphins Act, has been in the Senate for 29 months now and has repeatedly been tangled up in Conservative stalling tactics led by Sen. Don Plett, the Tories’ whip and the caucus critic on the bill.

“We are extremely upset because Sen. Moore’s bill has not passed third reading,” said Liberal Sen. Jim Munson, who sat on the Senate fisheries committee through 17 hearings on the bill, and heard from 40 witnesses between February and October of 2017.

“We’ve been through all the processes and it’s being held up. Our understanding is that deals were made (last night) to pass certain bills and Sen. Moore’s bill wasn’t part of it. That’s the issue for us. We’ve debated this bill. It’s been before the Senate for an awful long time. The procedural delays don’t sit well with us.”

At a press conference Tuesday morning, MPs from across party lines told reporters the time had come for the bill, as well as Bill S-214, The Cruelty-free Cosmetics Act and Bill S-238, The Ban on Shark Fin Importation Act, to be put to a vote before the Senate rises for the summer.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, Conservative MP Michelle Rempel, Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, and NDP MP and Fisheries Critic Fin Donnelly, as well as Julie MacInnes, campaign manager for the Humane Society International/Canada and Camille Labchuk, executive director of Animal Justice, said after so much time and study, the three animal protection bills deserve to be voted on and move forward to the House.

Sen. Yuen Pau Woo, the leader of the Independent Senators Group, heeded that message and called for a vote on all three of them Tuesday night. He singled out the whale and dolphin captivity bill because it has been in the Senate for three years, if its initial tabling in June 2015 before the federal election is factored in, and has “seen particularly egregious acts of delay.”

It’s something “I think the Canadian public is anxious to see us make a decision on,” he said.

And to be clear, he said he was calling for a vote on the entire bill, not just the amendment introduced last week by Conservative Sen. Scott Tannas to exclude the Vancouver Aquarium from being covered by the bill, and the sub-amendment made moments later by Plett to exclude Marineland.

Those are the only two facilities that keep captive cetaceans in Canada.

Those moves were followed by a series of procedural motions from Conservative senators to prevent a vote on the amendments or the bill that went late into the night — something Woo said Canadians would have been appalled to watch had it been televised.

“I hope, colleagues, that you will question on all three and take us all the way through to the main motion because that’s the whole point of this,” he told the Senate last night.

“If we simply have a vote on the sub-amendment, I think everybody will see that for what it is, another delay tactic, another attempt to obfuscate, to prevaricate, to procrastinate. We have enough of these “-ates.”

With the sub-amendment looking to be headed for defeat, Plett was soon on his feet.

“Defer the vote until tomorrow, at the next sitting of the Senate,” he said.

That vote on the sub-amendment was set for Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. (where it was it was defeated 51-32).

With that, it was onto Bill S-214, which would ban the cosmetic animal testing in Canada. Independent Sen. Pierrette Ringuette moved to adjourn debate to the next sitting of the Senate.

Plett adjourned the vote on that motion for one hour.

When senators returned at 9:30 p.m. to vote, 50 voted against the motion, so the debate was to resume on S-214 — which senators passed and sent to the House.

[READ MORE: Bill that would ban cosmetic animal testing clears the Senate]

Ringuette then stood to resume third reading debate on her bill S-237 — An Act to amend the Criminal Code (criminal interest rate) — and put forth an amendment on it. She was also looking to have the bill voted on and passed, as it too has been blocked and delayed for some time.

After she spoke, Liberal Sen. Terry Mercer moved to adjourn debate on the proposed amendment to the next sitting of the Senate. The vote on that was set for an hour later at 11:30 p.m., at which point, Sen. Jane Cordy moved to adjourn for the night.

Somewhere in that initial hour adjournment is where the deal was struck between some Conservative and Independent senators to bundle S-237 with the cosmetic animal testing and shark finning bills — both sponsored by Tory senators — but not the whale captivity bill, which was introduced by a Liberal.

“We weren’t part of any deal,” said Liberal Sen. Cordy. “It just appeared to us that there was a deal being made without consolation of our leader or deputy leader. I don’t know who it was made with, (but) I know the Conservatives were part of it. I don’t know who on the Independent side was a part of it.

“Certainly someone worked with Sen. Plett. From everything that happened after that vote, it appeared a deal had been made, excluding the whale bill. That was not what Senator Woo brought forward.”

She admitted it took her by surprise.

“If you really don’t want the bill, vote against it. But to stall it and not allow anybody to vote is really not good,” Cordy said, adding it was all “getting old.”

Woo said by the time the deal was struck to pair the cosmetic testing and shark finning bill with the criminal interest rate bill, a vote on amendments to exclude Marineland and the Vancouver Aquarium from the captivity bill had already been bumped to today.

“In my speech I did not make a deal. I did not cut a deal. I specifically said I’m not linking the three (animal protection) bills. I asked senators to consider them on their merits. My main concern was to see if we can get a vote on the whale and dolphin bill.”

He believes his words resonated with his colleagues — including Conservative senators who came up to him afterwards to say as much.

“It looks very much to me like this is a one man crusade,” Woo said, noting there are a few others who take pages from Plett’s playbook.

“The puzzle is why the entire caucus seems to be willing to go along with one person’s antagonism. But I’m not a psychologist …”

For him, the real question is about the partisan caucus structure and the role of whips in caucuses and parliamentary groups.

“Is that an appropriate role and a role we want to see in the modern Senate? Particularly on private members’ bills?”

There will always be individuals who feel strongly about one issue or another and will remain steadfast in their position, and Woo said that’s not a bad thing.

“But after all these processes have gone through their course, it is profoundly undemocratic for one person to then hold up a vote. We’re talking about a vote, not a decision.”

Although Plett’s control falls in line with the rules of the Senate, Munson said it doesn’t strike him as right that “one person should have so much power.”

“Willie Moore, who has worked his heart out and worked so hard not only on this bill but many, was such a dedicated senator. The least we owe to him is to have this bill voted on and sent to the other side, because as I understand it, the other side wants to see it.”

One source told iPolitics the Liberals who blocked the vote on Ringuette’s bill did so out of loyalty to Moore.

Munson’s frustrated with how the situation has unfolded, especially given how thoroughly studied the bill was at committee and the number of witnesses on both sides senators heard from.

“We’ve listened to every expert on it. That it should be held up like this is just not right,” he said.

“Unfair is too light a word to use.”

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