Roundup: The PMO’s invisible levers in the Senate

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One of the big things that emerged from the Duffy trial yesterday was a raft of new emails released from Nigel Wright, along with Wright’s testimony. While none of it was particularly damning to the prime minister, a number of pundits and journalists were baying over the Twitterverse and elsewhere that “this proves that the PMO is controlling the Senate! Where’s the independence?” and so on, I’m going to get everyone to take a deep breath and calm down. Yes, the PMO has been playing the Senate leadership – not the Senate itself – like its own private pawn. I’m not going to dispute that fact. But I am going to offer some context. First of all, Stephen Harper broke the Senate with his petulant refusal to make appointments from 2006 to 2008, and then made mass appointments, which damaged the chamber. (Refresher read here). He had a Senate leader who did his bidding without question, which is a problem. Because said Senate leader had so many newbie senators under her wing who did her bidding without question, it set up a power dynamic that allowed the PMO to exercise power levers that don’t actually exist. Wright complained about this lack of levers at times in his correspondence, and we also know that the Senate staff, including committee clerks, were pushing back against this PMO control, even to the point of threatening legal action. (And to that point, this BuzzFeed headline is wrong – they weren’t “rogue staffers,” they were Senate staffers instead of political ones). This makes it a problem of actors instead of institutions. As it is designed, the Senate is already a bastion of institutional independence – appointed Senators have absolutely nothing preventing them from speaking truth to power, because they are protected right up to a retirement age of 75, which in turn protects them from needing to curry favour with the PM to get a post-Senate appointment to a board or tribunal. The system is designed to ensure that they can be fully independent – the problem is that the current crop of Conservative senators has chosen not to be, whether it’s out of ignorance of their role, sentimentality for the prime minister who appointed them, or the fact that they sincerely believe he knows what’s best, so they’ll do what he asks. I can’t think of any way to tinker with the system to prevent that. As a rule, senators get better with age, and when a party leadership changes, they tend to get really independent in a hurry, but until that point, this remains a problem of political actors instead of institutions.

On the campaign:

  • Here is the Wednesday campaign round-up.
  • Stephen Harper announced that you can take more out of your RRSP for a home down payment which is pretty much the opposite of good economic sense.
  • Thomas Mulcair complained the government hasn’t delivered for the Quebec City region, and tried to play up the Duffy trial resuming.
  • Justin Trudeau was in Regina and said he would grow the economy “from the heart outward” meaning the middle class, but everyone freaked out and posted Care Bear GIFs.

Good reads:

  • For the stuff on Nigel Wright’s testimony that totally didn’t damage Stephen Harper, here’s David Reevely, Nicholas Köhler, and Kady O’Malley’s liveblog recap.
  • Other revelations from the Duffy trial: concerns from the PMO that other senators didn’t meet residency requirements; Duffy wanted a guarantee his case wouldn’t be sent to the RCMP; and a very influential lobbyist was consulted on the media lines.
  • Public sector unions are trying to get the courts to grant an injunction preventing the government from changing sick leave rules during the election.
  • Here’s an election explainer about how voting rules have changed.
  • Adam Goldenberg explains what both Trudeau and Mulcair got right and wrong about the Supreme Court’s succession reference and the Clarity Act.
  • My column this week debunks some of the pernicious myths about why the Climate Change Accountability Act died in the Senate.

Odds and ends:

Manon Perreault, the former NDP MP who was convicted of criminal mischief, is now running for the Jean-François Party.

A former NDP candidate who “resigned” because of comments he made about Israel is now saying he was forced out, despite what party officials said.

Controversial Attawapiskat chief Theresa Spence is stepping down to run as deputy grand chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation.