Honourable senators, were I among your number I would rise to remind you, at this moment of political and constitutional crisis, that in the Red Chamber we are masters in our own house.

We must address allegations of serious wrongdoing against three of our members, not because the public is outraged but because they are right to be. And we must face the painful truth that our residency and expense rules were carelessly written and carelessly enforced.

We must deal with both matters decisively and transparently. We, and no one else.

For, I say again, we are masters in our own house. Thus the constitutional rules for Senate appointments and vacancies include the crucial Section 33: “If any Question arises respecting the Qualification of a Senator or a Vacancy in the Senate the same shall be heard and determined by the Senate.”

It must be so. For if this or any legislative body is not master of its own procedure, especially members’ tenure, it is but a colourful appendage to whichever branch of government does command it when to sit, what to say, and when to depart.

For centuries kings and prime ministers have sought to reduce legislatures to servile obedience and for centuries they have failed. If we cannot resist this process, we should depart in shame and never return. This week, one newspaper editorialized that we need not accord our wayward colleagues due process because the Senate is “not a court. It’s a debating chamber. They’ll get their day in court— if the RCMP investigations result in charges.” It is not so.

True, if charges are laid, they will be heard by the judicial branch. But we are no mere “debating chamber,” we are a legislative body whose independence is a fundamental constitutional principle. We may not be punished or rewarded for the words we speak or the votes we cast, neither by the Queen’s ministers or the judges they appoint.

For cabinet or courts to presume to tell us what to do or when or how, to reward our obedience or punish our refusal, is to usurp legislative functions to which the Constitution gives them no title. Thus while individual senators may be more concerned with criminal convictions than expulsion from this place, we as a body cannot be.

To suspend a senator without pay is no light thing. It has only been done once, to a member obstinately unwilling to attend to chamber business. Yet now we are asked to suspend three in haste, without a proper hearing, simply to save a prime minister from partisan embarrassment.

Asked? No. We are ordered to do it. Jump. Sit. Roll over. Beg.

Honourable senators, we cannot do that legally, constitutionally or morally. On partisan legislative business, our power is limited to insisting on sober second thought about what comes to us from the ministry via our elected colleagues in the other place. We cannot defy their settled wishes. But when it comes to the integrity of our proceedings, we are masters of our own business and within these walls due process is what we say it is. This power conveys no licence to be careless. Rather, it imposes a heavy responsibility to maintain far higher legal, ethical and constitutional standards than we have thus far on residency and expenses. Let us not now compound that error.

By all means let us discipline our colleagues and reform our rules as appropriate. After careful deliberation, through due process, in our own way, on our own time, as masters of our own affairs.

Before we do that, let us reject this egregious motion, burn the very paper on which it is written, and return the ashes to the Prime Minister’s Office in contemptuous defiance.