Hon. Peter Harder: Honourable senators, on behalf of the Progressive Senate Group I would like to associate myself with all of the comments made thus far.

Marc, it is a hard act to conclude, but I am going to reflect on Lord Peter Hennessy, both a friend and well-noted historian, who has written the book on the British machinery of government and parliamentary practice. He coined the phrase “hidden wiring.” In fact, he wrote a book called The Hidden Wiring which is about how governments work behind the scenes and the unseen connections that are essential to success.

I reflected on the fact that many people have talked about your role as the Government Representative in the Senate. I would like to take a few minutes to talk about the hidden wiring of representing the Senate to the government. Senator Tannas referred to it as being the “Senate whisperer,” whereas I’m making it an issue of the machinery of government. It is important for us to recall what we mean by that.

We would not have had the Parliament of Canada Act amendments without the Government Representative in the Senate impressing upon the government the importance of those amendments and persuading the Minister of Finance to include the necessary matters that were in the budget.

Also, in 2022 the Senate was asked to quickly pass Bill C-12 on the old age supplement, if you will recall. To avoid additional delays, Senator Gold promised this chamber that technical amendments addressing errors that had been introduced in the Old Age Security Act would be addressed at the earliest legislative opportunity. The fix was included in the Budget Implementation Act, or BIA, shortly thereafter. We trusted you to deliver the message to the government.

We were asked to pass Bill C-13 on official languages, even though it contained a drafting error. Senator Gold gave us his word that it would be fixed at the earliest legislative opportunity.

We trusted him, and, again, behind the scenes he worked to deliver the goods.

Finally, on Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act, the government asked the Senate to accept the House’s rejection of one of its most critical amendments, one that would have scoped out user-generated content from Bill C-11. Senator Gold made us a promise that we would appropriately scope out digital-first creators and user-generated content from Bill C-11 through the policy directive process following Royal Assent. But he went further, this time playing out his role representing the Senate to the government in the open, by including the following language in the Government Representative Office’s proposed message back to the House:

That the Senate take note of the Government of Canada’s stated intent that Bill C-11 will not apply to user-generated digital content and its commitment to issue policy direction to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission . . . .

In his remarks, Senator Gold stated that the message we would send to the other place with this motion was:

. . . that we, in the Senate, will be watching the government’s next steps very carefully with the expectation that they will be consistent with the promises they have made and that I have repeated to you in this chamber.

In other words, the hidden wiring of our institutional relationship is represented not just by the Government Representative in the Senate but by the Senate’s representative to the government.

I want to go back to Peter Hennessy again because he also had another well-coined phrase that he adopted several times in his history: He talked about the “good chap” theory of government. Now, I’m sure he meant it as a gender-neutral word, but “. . . a good chap knows what a good chap has to do and doesn’t need to be told.”

Senator Gold, you’re a good chap.

Hon. Senators: Hear, hear.