Greetings All. Third Reading debate of Bill S-18 continued in the Senate yesterday (Wednesday) with Senator Madeleine Plamondon speaking against the access we seek. As have others who oppose that access, she made references to 'promises' being broken and related this to a lack of trust the people have in politicians. The debate yesterday was more lengthy than those previously reported on. Some of this debate consisted of heckling on the part of some Senators that oppose access. I will not go into it here in any length but urge all to read the debate for themselves. For the first time some Senators, other than our champion Senator Milne, had supportive comments to make. As usual, the extracted Hansard debate has been placed on the Post 1901 Census Project website at the URL following my signature. Follow the link for "Progress of Bill S-18" For her speech opposing Bill S-18 Senator Plamondon will earn a Red X of Opposition on our Senators Scoreboard. Because they voted in favour of Senator Comeau's amendment that would have closed access to all Censuses from 1918 to 2005, a number of other Senators have earned their Red X of Opposition as well. They will appear as soon as I am able to make the changes to our website. Fortunately, the amendment of Senator Comeau was defeated so that what remains to be considered is the original Bill as presented by the government. We had hoped that Bill S-18 would have finished Third Reading and be referred to the House of Commons before the Senate recessed for the Easter break. We had hopes this would happen today (Thursday 24 March). Instead of that however, at the end of sitting yesterday, the Senate voted to adjourn until Tuesday 12 April 2005, at 2:00 PM. Even should all of those Senators who still wish to speak to Bill S-18 be able to do so, and it passed Third Reading and was referred to the House of Commons on 12 April, at that time there will be only 32 House sitting days left before Parliament recesses for the Summer. It is looking less and less like we will see Bill S-18 proceed in the House through First Reading, Second Reading, Committee and Report stages, Third Reading and Royal Assent before the Summer break. Happy (?) Hunting. Gordon A. Watts [email protected] Co-chair Canada Census Committee Port Coquitlam, BC http://www.globalgenealogy.com/Census en francais http://www.globalgenealogy.com/Census/Index_f.htm Permission to forward without notice is granted