Sen. Yuen Pau Woo, facilitator of the Independent Senators Group, speaks to reporters in March 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

If the cameras were rolling in the Senate Tuesday night, as they will be this fall, and Canadians had been able to watch what happened there, they’d have been “appalled,” said Sen. Yuen Pau Woo, leader of the Independent Senators Group.

On the floor, as debate resumed, was Bill S-203, which proposes banning whale and dolphin captivity in Canada. After summarizing all that’s been heard in the chamber and at committee about the bill, Independent Sen. Patricia Bovey kicked things off by calling for the vote to happen.

“We heard it has been over 29 months since this bill’s long swim began. So what are we waiting for?”

As it would turn out, amendments, sub-amendments and several hour-long delays proposed by Conservative senators opposed to the bill took things into the night with no result to show at the end of it all.

“I was thinking if the Canadian public got to see the spectacle we engaged in — ringing one-hour bells, using procedural tactics to essentially not allow a bill that’s been on the order paper for three years to have a vote — I think the public would be appalled,” Woo said.

“What are we doing in the Senate, twiddling our thumbs, for hours waiting for a vote to happen?”

He said at some point, all bills should come to a vote when there’s been a thorough airing of views.

“It’s hard to argue that that hasn’t happened with this bill,” Woo said.

“It’s frustrating that the Senate, my Senate, engages in practices that are archaic, time-wasting and money-wasting, and not in keeping with the mission of the Senate.”

First tabled in June of 2015 by former Liberal Sen. Wilfred Moore, S-203 was re-introduced in December 2015 after the federal election. Following first reading, it spent nearly a year at second reading, and only then got its vote and referral to committee in late 2016 due to the failure of a draconian hoist amendment moved by Conservative Sen. Scott Tannas.

On more than one occasion at committee, there were Conservative attempts to quietly kill the bill.

It’s now in its 29th month before the Senate — three years if the initial tabling is counted. Along the way, it has produced plenty of debate. Between February and October 2017, the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans held 17 meetings while studying the bill, and heard from more than 40 witnesses in the process.

By comparison, Bill C-14 — the legislation on medical assistance in dying — received five pre-study hearings and just two committee hearings when it landed in the Senate. The Harper government’s controversial terrorism bill (C-51) also received five pre-study hearings and two committee hearings.

During his third reading speech a few weeks ago, the bill’s current sponsor, Independent Sen. Murray Sinclair, made a powerful plea to his colleagues to support the bill.



“How would you feel if you had to live the rest of your life in a bathtub? I think we are sympathetic enough to imagine what that must be like,” he said of “the cruel fate” of living life in a “relatively minuscule” concrete tub.

Bovey told the chamber all that remains is for them to respect the democratic principle of the Senate and make a decision.

“Senators, it is time for a vote. For this bill’s many thousands of supporters in Canada and around the world, and most importantly for the whales and dolphins, I now call for a vote on Bill S-203.”

Sen. Tannas didn’t agree. After speaking about conducting his own independent research on the matter, “including talking to scientists and researchers, particularly at the Vancouver Aquarium,” and how he’s kept in contact with those representatives throughout this process, he proposed changing the bill.

“Who are we here, in Ottawa, to reach across the country to a 60-year-old institution that has saved countless lives and developed a base of knowledge that we will never be able to replicate? I don’t believe it’s our job,” he said.

He moved an amendment to exclude the Vancouver Aquarium from being covered by the bill. The aquarium is one of two facilities in Canada that keep captive cetaceans, although it announced in January it will no longer do so.

Next up was Sen. Don Plett, the Conservatives’ whip in the Senate and the caucus critic on the bill.

“I met with people on both sides of this issue, and it became very clear to me that this was a battle between activist and scientist, and that this was an activist-driven bill and nothing more,” he told the chamber.

It’s worth noting that some of those “activists” who appeared before the Senate fisheries committee in support of the bill include Dr. Hal Whitehead, a Dalhousie University marine biologist who’s been studying marine mammals for more than 30 years, and Dr. Ingrid Visser, a fellow marine biologist who has studied orca in New Zealand for decades as well.

Plett then requested a sub-amendment to Tannas’ amendment that would exclude Marineland, the other facility in Canada that keeps captive cetaceans, from the scope of the proposed legislation.

That was followed by a series of procedural motions from Conservative senators to prevent a vote on the amendments or the bill.

This lasted for two hours — and would appear to be the same tactics used to delay the national anthem bill in the Senate for 18 months.

When senators returned at 9:30 p.m., there was a vote on division to accept a motion to adjourn once again.

Woo said it was just as well they called it a night at that point.

“There was no point in continuing with the charge. They would have continued to move sub-amendments, there’d be hour bells. We’d have done nothing from 10 till midnight,” he said.

“I’d rather be doing nothing at home than doing nothing in the Senate.”

But by doing nothing and failing to allow votes to come to a decision, he said the chamber is failing to fulfill its duty.

“These tactics are a waste of time and money, and they ultimately reflect badly on the Upper House.”

When he was first appointed in 2016, he admits he was surprised by what he saw.

“I’m now hardened, I’m a battle-weary senator having witnessed these kinds of delays and other partisan tactics. It reinforces why I came to the Senate and so many of my colleagues,” Woo said.

“We’re not here to just improve legislation and represent minorities, we’re here to try and improve the functioning of the Senate and improve the public’s view and receptivity to its historic constitutional role as the complimentary chamber of sober second thought in Canada’s Parliament.

“What we saw last night is a classic example of what we want to avoid.”

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