Hon. Judy A. White: Honourable senators, I hadn’t planned on speaking, but over the past few weeks I have found myself reflecting deeply on this place and my place in it. Do I fit here? Do I need to fit here? More importantly, do I want to fit here?

A couple of weeks ago, my esteemed colleague, my dear friend Senator Peter Harder, framed the question in this way: Are we institutionalists or activists? I started reflecting on that.

As most of you know, I often speak of “two-eyed seeing,” a principle articulated by Elder Albert Marshall of Eskasoni, Nova Scotia. Two-eyed seeing teaches us to see from one eye with the strengths of our Mi’kmaw ways of knowing and from the other eye with the strengths of western systems, and to use both together for the benefit of all. So I applied that teaching here to our chamber, our work and this debate on Bill C-12.

First, I realize that I am both an institutionalist and an activist. I am an institutionalist because I really respect this chamber, its history, its constitutional role and the enormous responsibility we carry as a place of sober second thought.

I realize that, at heart, I am very much an activist because I carry the lived realities of people who, too often, feel that the system is built around them but not with them, people who feel that processes move on paper while our lives still stand still, and people who want fairness but not as an abstraction. Two-eyed seeing doesn’t allow me to choose one identity and abandon the other. It does something more demanding: It requires me to hold both responsibly.

So, colleagues, we’ve heard some thoughtful and serious interventions in this debate, including those of Senator Dean, Senator Senior and Senator Housakos. I thank you for that.

However, I also want to speak not only about the provisions before us but about the posture we bring to our scrutiny because posture shapes outcomes.

Honourable senators, part of what I’ve been wrestling with is this: The discipline of sober second thought can so easily become confused with something else, something more corrosive. I don’t like always speaking from a deficit.

Our role is to examine, test, probe and improve, but scrutiny doesn’t require cynicism, and rigour doesn’t demand distrust. We can carefully study something without starting from the deficit that there is something wrong, that there is something suspect.

I agree with what Senator Housakos was saying. We can’t live in a society where we always look at what is wrong. We have to start with the premise that the system works.

Colleagues, we live in a time in which confidence is fragile, political polarization is deepening, and conspiratorial thinking and populism are gaining ground globally. People are told every day that institutions can’t be trusted, public servants can’t be trusted, courts can’t be trusted, and in some cases, elections can’t be trusted.

Yes, we must be vigilant, but we also have to be responsible with our words.

In public discourse right now, there is a temptation to speak as though any attempt to recalibrate a system is, by definition, an assault on rights, and any mention of integrity or scrutiny is, by definition, an expression of fear.

I don’t subscribe to those views. With my two-eyed seeing, that is not the kind of absolutism that I hold. Immigration systems do not operate in abstraction; they operate within finite, administrative capacities in complex geopolitical times and increasingly global displacement. They operate in our real communities that must plan for housing, health care, schooling and settlement support. They operate under pressures, which if unaddressed, will produce more delays, inconsistencies and unfairness. That is the institutional responsibility that I speak of.

Senators, a restructuring of timelines is not automatically a denial of rights. An effort to close gaps in inconsistency is not automatically an attack on compassion. An existence of discretion is not automatically a power grab. Discretion exists throughout our whole statutory framework. The real question is whether it is exercised within constitutional constraints, whether it is reviewable, whether it’s guided and whether it can be challenged when wrongly used.

Now, colleagues, I’m sure you’re at the point where you are saying, “Well, maybe she doesn’t fit here,” but please bear with me as I find my notes.

Supporting this bill, to me, means not abandoning compassion. It does not mean dismissing human dignity. It means I’m persuaded that, on balance, this legislation remains within the bounds of fairness and responsibility, and that maintaining a credible, functioning system is in itself an act of protection, which is our role and our responsibility, because when the system collapses, it’s actually about the vulnerability of those who are left in the ruins.

So perhaps the question that our colleague and my friend Senator Harder posed — “Are we institutionalists or are we activists?” — was never meant as a choice. Perhaps it was an invitation to remember that institutions exist to serve people, and activism, at its best, seeks not to burn down legitimacy but to bring justice within it.

Two-eyed seeing teaches me that our task is not to choose between compassion and structure. Our task is to hold both responsibly, thoughtfully and with integrity. That is why, with both eyes — the activist eye and the institutional eye — I will support this bill. Wela’lin, thank you.

Some Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!