Roundup: Half-assing discussions on the Senate

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With all of the recent attention on the Senate lately, there has been no shortage of columns and think-pieces about the institution, calls for its abolition, and the conflation of a host of issues under the banner of “scandal” writ large, all senators painted with the brush of criminality, all of the expense issues flagged by the Auditor General treated as outright graft, and now with the accusations against Senator Don Meredith of sexual impropriety with a teenager, the institution itself seems to bear the blame. Never mind that elected officials are often caught misspending or engaging in inappropriate behaviour (there is a reason why the Commons Clerk has a conversation with the female pages at the beginning of every session). Add to the pile is the weekend longread in the Ottawa Citizen about what to do with the problem of the Senate. And for as much as it was a noble effort, it fell apart rather quickly on a number of fronts. For one, for a piece of its length, it relied on astonishingly few sources – one retiring Conservative senator who is engaged in a campaign of self-serving legacy-building, one who has already retired, the same political scientist that every reporter goes to for a quote, and one more lesser-known political scientist to push back against a few of the claims. That’s not a lot for a fairly complex issue. Much of the article is taken up by the fixation on a referendum on Senate abolition, be it from Hugh Segal’s outright bizarre notion that it could somehow give the institution legitimacy if it were rejected, to the usual nonsense that it will somehow spur premiers to action. Completely absent from the self-awareness of any of these arguments is the fundamental concept that one of the Senate’s very primary purposes was to protect the interests of minority provinces – to say that referendum result can somehow wipe away those very real interests is a complete betrayal of the principles of a liberal democracy which is supposed to mediate against the harms of mob rule. The piece also makes boneheaded statements like the composition of the Senate over-representing smaller provinces – which was the whole point, to have a system of regional representation that was not bound to representation-by-population. The Senate’s model of equal regions was designed to counter the rep-by-pop of the Commons, and the inability for people to grasp this simple fact is gob smacking. Nowhere in any discussion of reform are the reasons the Senate was structured the way it was – to provide institutional independence against the reprisals of a government they push back against. Accusations of ineffectiveness are mired in the recent past as opposed to a broader look at times when the Senate has less deferential, nor does it look at reasons why it’s in a deferential state right now (hint: the manner in which the current Prime Minister made his selections). And the issue of the lack of seriousness by which successive prime ministers have taken their appointment powers is not explored at all, when it is probably the most important part of the discussion about what to do about the Senate. If we’re going to have a discussion about the Senate, then let’s be serious about it. Half-assed attempts like this don’t help the conversation.

Good reads:

  • The big news is that James Moore has decided not to run again, citing issues with his son’s health (who has special needs), making him the fifth minister to not run again.
  • David Reeveley reflects on what the Duffy trial has shown about the Senate.
  • Maclean’s has a wide-ranging interview with Justin Trudeau.
  • Conservative senators are moving to amend the Reform Act with the intention to kill it (which is a good thing because it’s a terrible bill)
  • The RCMP have updated their statistics on missing and murdered Aboriginal women, drawing even more links between homicide and domestic violence.
  • The first Cyclone helicopters got delivered, but they need “improvements” (hint: engines not powerful enough) and won’t be combat ready until 2021.
  • 19 of the 30 senators flagged by the Auditor General are going to arbitration.
  • The Conservatives are theoretically sitting out three by-elections currently running in order to exploit a loophole in the spending caps.
  • Susan Delacourt laments the use of microtargeting in campaigns under first-past-the-post (despite the other advantages to the system such as accountability).

Odds and ends:

NDP MP Christine Moore was apparently in a yelling match with some of her colleagues as the Commons was rising yesterday.

Senators have been flooded with anti-C-51 emails, and only half of them have been form letters.

Some of its former denizens recall their time at 24 Sussex.

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