I'd be happy to.
It's good that we have an early opportunity to engage in a bicameral way on what the processes are, particularly as the Senate of Canada has evolved to a less partisan, more independent approach.
The first point I would make is it is rare that the government introduces a bill in the Senate for first consideration. That is why “S” bills are few in number. They cannot be bills that have any financial obligation attached to them. They are often used on matters that are viewed as important, urgent and not controversial. For example, free trade agreements have been introduced in the Senate first.
This bill was introduced in the Senate a year ago. The government felt that the agenda in the House of Commons was so charged and the bill was so necessary to signal the direction the government wished to go in inadmissibility, so they used the Senate. Again, it is not often, but it is not without precedent.
In the Senate we have a government representative, of which I was once one. For the four years from 2016-20, I served as the government representative. That's the senator who is overall responsible for the management of the government's agenda in the Senate. As a privy councillor they work with cabinet directly in terms of the legislative agenda, particularly as it references the Senate. I'm not in that role. I have not been since 2020.
For each bill in the Senate, the government representative seeks a sponsor. Unusually, it could be somebody within the government representative office. Usually it's not. I was the first executive director of the Immigration and Refugee Board. I was the first deputy minister of citizenship and immigration. I was, before I left government, the deputy minister of foreign affairs. I had some familiarity with the tools and mechanisms of what we were dealing with here. Because of my interest in this area, I thought it would be appropriate and interesting to sponsor this bill.
As I indicated in my opening remarks, the sponsor's role is to advance the bill and to work with colleagues to ensure that the appropriate witnesses are heard and that the bill proceeds at a pace that wins the support of colleagues. In this case, the bill was dealt with rather expeditiously, having been introduced on May 17 and ultimately having achieved third reading, I believe, on June 16.
It is completely normal that we seek sponsors across the aisle. In my time, even a Conservative senator sponsored a government bill, which is an indication of how much less partisan our chamber is. I make no comparators, except to assert that we are comfortable with that approach.