Roundup: Nolin’s passing a blow to the Senate

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The passing of Senate Speaker Pierre-Claude Nolin leaves the institution in a pretty vulnerable place. In light of the Duffy/Wallin/Brazeau affairs, Nolin was on a mission to bring some internal reform to the Chamber, both in terms of financial controls and the like, but also with ensuring that senators themselves were better educated as to their own roles. When Nolin was first named Speaker, he invited reporters to the Chamber for a Q&A, and before he took questions, he gave us a little talk, brandishing a copy of the Supreme Court reference decision on Senate reform, and made note of some key passages about the roles of a Senator. His message to his fellow senators was pretty frank – here are some things that you’re not doing, and we need to improve on that. Long-time readers of mine will know the root of some of these problems – not just a few poor appointments by the current Prime Minister, but the fact that appointments happened in large numbers. The Chamber works best absorbing one or two new members at a time, and they can find their feet and generally get on with feeling out their sense of institutional independence. When a fifth of the chamber is brought in all at once, they are more pliant and susceptible to control from the top, which is what happened. Nolin, always an independent thinker and someone not afraid to go against the current government, whose caucus he was a member of, wanted more of that from his fellow senators, and he probably would have done a lot to get them to a better place, institutionally speaking, if he’d had more time. Now, I’m not sure who will be able to take his place. The Speaker Pro Tempore (equivalent of the Deputy Speaker in the Commons) is not exactly an independent thinker, and is part of a cabal of players around the Senate Leader’s office, who in turn are supine to the PMO for a variety of reasons. That group is not going to continue Nolin’s work of trying to make the chamber a more independent place. We’ll have to see who the PM will ultimately choose, but Nolin has set a high bar that will be difficult to match. Elsewhere, here are some highlights of Nolin’s career. On Power Play, Mercedes Stephenson spoke to the man who appointed Nolin, Brian Mulroney (and a correction to Stephenson – Nolin was not elected to the Speaker position, as it’s a prime ministerial appointment. The praise for him was unanimous, however).

https://twitter.com/dgardner/status/591589139079892993

Good reads:

  • In the Duffy trial, things got testy as Duffy’s lawyer accused the head of Senate finance as an “interested witness,” and it looks like things are going to run into the fall at least. Nicholas Köhler paints the scene, and here is Maclean’s weekly Duffy comic strip.
  • Martin Patriquin looks at some of the organisational difficulty the federal Liberals are having in Quebec, in part because they dumped their organisers in the Senate.
  • Omar Khadr was granted bail, which sent the government into complete apoplexy.
  • Elizabeth May managed to get amendments to a government bill on the polluter pay principle.
  • Susan Delacourt looks at the drive for the familiar in Canadian politics.

Odds and ends:

Glen McGregor crunches the numbers on the regional imbalances in the Order of Canada.

Supreme Court Justice Marshall Rothstein announced his retirement date will be August 31st, though he could sit until December.