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Former federal cabinet minister Rona Ambrose introduced a bill requiring sexual-assault training for judges that passed unanimously in the House of Commons nearly two years ago.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

Former federal cabinet minister Rona Ambrose is criticizing the Senate for holding up her private member’s bill requiring sexual-assault law education for judges, nearly two years after it passed the House of Commons.

The former MP said she learned late last week that her appearance before the Senate committee on legal and constitutional affairs, which is studying the bill, was pushed back a fifth time. She was expecting to appear before committee on Wednesday and has not been given a new date.

“Once again, they have shown that sexual-assault survivors are not a priority,” she said. “I suspect they will go straight into other government business and use that as yet another delay tactic. ... The bottom line is this is the old boys’ club protecting the old boys’ club.”

Ms. Ambrose’s Bill C-337, the Judicial Accountability Through Sexual Assault Law Training Act, would restrict eligibility for federal judicial appointments to those who have completed education in sexual-assault law and social context.

It would also require the Canadian Judicial Council to report on seminars in matters related to sexual-assault law and it amends the Criminal Code to require that reasons provided by a judge in sexual-assault decisions be entered in the record of the proceedings or be in writing.

Senator Serge Joyal, chair of the committee, said the reason Ms. Ambrose’s bill has not yet been studied at committee is because government bills take precedence over private member’s bills and his committee has been swamped with government legislation.

“So as soon as committee’s work will have been completed on government legislation, the private member’s bill of Madame Ambrose is the first on top of it. ... That’s the procedure, it’s not me that’s defined that procedure. It is the procedure that is followed in the Senate.”

On Wednesday, the House of Commons adopted a motion from NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh calling on the Senate to pass Ms. Ambrose’s bill and NDP MP Romeo Saganash’s private member’s bill, which would require the government to ensure Canadian laws are in harmony with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Mr. Singh’s motion says that both bills are “critical pieces of legislation” that have been passed by the House of Commons and have been in possession of senators for months.

Ms. Ambrose said she stayed quiet for the past year and a half and realized in the last couple of months that if her bill doesn’t get time at committee and go to a vote, it never will because Parliament has seven weeks of sittings left before the federal election scheduled for October. The former interim Conservative leader recently launched a social-media campaign and a petition to pressure senators to move forward with the legislation.

Brian Laghi, the director of communications for the government representative in the Senate, Peter Harder, said Ms. Ambrose’s bill “has taken longer to deal with than bills that have come to us that were unanimously passed in the House.”

Nine private member’s bills have received royal assent since the beginning of the parliamentary session.

Of those nine, two bills that arrived to the Senate after a unanimous recorded vote in the Commons, C-224, the Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act and C-305, which amends the Criminal Code, took about six months to pass the Senate.

Another, Bill C-211, which addresses post-traumatic stress disorder, also had the support from all parties in the House of Commons at second reading, and it took about a year to pass. Some bills, including Ms. Ambrose’s, landed in the Senate with no recorded vote from the House of Commons.

Mr. Joyal said he did receive a letter from Ms. Ambrose about the bill and that Senator Raynell Andreychuk, who is sponsoring the bill, expressed her concern about how long it was taking.

Senator André Pratte, a member of the Senate committee, said he has worked on a number of amendments and he believes the bill will pass with the help of his proposed changes. He said the changes will make the bill similar to a law that was passed recently in Prince Edward Island, and which Ms. Ambrose supports.

“When there’s a will there’s a way, so I hope we find a way to do this because it’s important,” he said.

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