Conservative senators are again looking to kill a bill that would ban whale and dolphin captivity in Canada.

Tom McInnis, a Tory member of the Senate Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, is expected to try and drum up support for the adoption of a report recommending the Senate not proceed with Bill S-203, which the committee has been studying since February.

When that might happen remains to be seen; the committee hasn’t met since Parliament resumed Sept. 18. While several meetings have been scheduled, they’ve all been cancelled. Committee Chair Fabian Manning’s medical leave is the reason this week’s meeting was cancelled. As for the week prior, committee clerk Mireille LaForge said the Senate was still sitting when the 5 p.m. committee was set to start on Sept. 26. It adjourned at 5:37 p.m.

“It was a decision made by the steering committee,” she said.

It’s worth noting the Conservatives are at the helm of that steering committee.

No explanation has been offered for why no meetings were scheduled for the week of Sept. 18, when the Senate returned. Since February, the committee has met on Tuesday and Thursday a good many weeks, given the large number of witnesses looking to speak to the bill.

LaForge said things should be back on track after next week’s break.

“There’s nothing fishy (going on),” she said.

The committee also has to choose a new deputy chair to replace Sen. Elizabeth Hubley, a Liberal senator from Prince Edward Island who retired in September.

“My guess is they’re not ready to have a meeting,” said Independent Sen. Murray Sinclair, the bill’s sponsor. He has amendments to the bill he’s looking to put forward but hasn’t had a chance yet.

“Whenever they’re ready, I’m there,” he said. “Before the summer break, the steering committee had a discussion about not proceeding with the bill and not reporting it. That discussion was deferred. I’m assuming the first committee meeting will be about that.”

He’s also heard there’s a renewed move afoot to kill the bill — and he’s not pleased.

“I can tell you that my feeling is very strong that when bills come to the Senate, the reason they go to the committee is to be studied, to make improvements. (Senators) have an obligation to send the bill back with a recommendation to the Senate so that it can be voted on,” Sinclair said.

“To keep it away from senators is not in keeping with the intention of the Senate. Our stance is to get the bill at least to the floor of the Senate and let the senators decide.”

He added that the Senate’s purpose as a chamber of ‘sober second thought’ is to allow members to come to their own conclusions, and to explain to the public why they did what they did.

“The problem with backroom discussions is is that no one ends up explaining why. I don’t like that and I don’t think Canadians like that.”

Marineland and the Vancouver Aquarium, the only two facilities in Canada that have whales and dolphins in captivity, both want the bill killed and have lobbied hard to make that happen.

“They’ve organized a campaign to convince senators not to support the bill. The Conservative caucus appears to have gotten on that wagon,” Sinclair said. “At the committee level, it will be up to the Liberal and Independent senators to deal with the efforts of the Conservatives, whatever it is they’re going to try to do.”

He said the Conservatives have been pretty up-front about their dislike of the bill and have been very much in the corner with Marineland and the Vancouver Aquarium, who have helped Tory senators with their research and preparation.

“There’s a lot of material that’s come to committee that’s flowed from Marineland. They haven’t been shy about it. I suspect they will continue that stance.”

In June, the Conservatives were also expected to put a motion forward to quietly kill the bill. Thanks to the notoriety the bill has attracted around the world through social media, when word of that plan was made public, people flooded individual senators’ voice mail and email inboxes with thousands of messages in support of the bill. That led the Senate’s IT department to send out a notice warning that the extremely high volume of emails was causing long delays in sending or receiving Senate email.

One issue that arose in the committee’s work before the summer recess was the need for Aboriginal consultations. One section of the bill would amend the Wild Animal and Plant Protection and Regulation of International and Interprovincial Trade Act to prohibit imports and exports of cetaceans to and from Canada. Andrew Burns, a lawyer for Marineland in Ontario, appeared before the committee in mid-May and argued the bill intrudes into issues of constitutionally-protected Inuit rights, specifically on the sale of narwhal tusks and harvesting wildlife.

He said the park’s position is that the legal ‘duty to consult’ with the Inuit had not been fulfilled.

At a June 8 meeting of the committee, Sen. Don Plett picked up where Marineland had left off and raised the issue of Aboriginal consultations again. The Conservative whip has made no attempt to hide his support for Marineland and the Vancouver Aquarium at committee or on social media.

However, former Liberal Sen. Wilfred Moore, the original sponsor of the bill when it was introduced in 2015, told the committee in his opening remarks in late February that he was aware of concerns about the import and export restrictions in the bill being overly broad.

iPolitics reached out to Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer to find out if he stands with Conservative senators in their efforts to stall and kill the bill. His office wouldn’t comment, instead putting the question to the office of Sen. Larry Smith, leader of the Senate Conservatives. No answers were provided by press time. McInnis also didn’t respond to a request for comment.