Plenty of developments in the Senate yesterday, all of them resignation related. Manitoba Senator Maria Chaput resigned due to health concerns, Conservative Senator Irving Gerstein has reached his mandatory retirement age, and Senate Liberal Senator Pierrette Ringuette has resigned from the Senate Liberal caucus to sit as an Independent. As part of the tributes to Gerstein, there were some overwrought statements on the Conservative side about the value of political fundraisers, and I will say that I’m not one of those people who has a kneejerk reaction to fundraisers who get appointed to the Senate. Why? Because these are people who interact with the voters as much as MPs do, and have a pretty good sense of what their issues are (if only to exploit them for political gain). It’s like being aghast that there’s politics in politics. Granted, the tone out of the Conservative Senate caucus these days of “See! There’s nothing wrong with being partisan!” isn’t helping their case any, but on a fundamental level they’re right. They just need to tone it down from an eleven to a two or a three. As for Ringuette, I will note that the fetishised tones being used to describe the “desire for an independent Senate” are as equally overwrought as the Conservatives’ defence of partisanship. I was particularly struck by Ringuette going on Power & Politics and declaring that there’s nothing in the constitution that says that the Senate has to be a partisan body, therefore she and others of that mindset feel that there’s no role for partisanship. Where that argument falls apart is that it’s right in the preamble of the constitution itself – that Canada has a political system like that of the United Kingdom, and last I checked, its upper chamber was also a partisan body (and no, this isn’t an invitation to compare the Senate to the House of Lords, because they are very different institutions, but the principle of the upper chamber remains). People who insist that something isn’t in the constitution (*cough*Elizabeth May*cough*) ignore the unwritten parts of it, which are just as valid as the written parts, and it’s not an adequate defence for how they imagine institutions to function. So while it’s good on Ringuette to want to go her own way, I do think that the conversation around independent senators is still in its early stages, and I have no doubt that there are plenty of surprises on the way.

Good reads:

• The Auditor General’s report had damning chapters on Shared Services Canada, export inspections, military housing, disability payments, and gender-based analysis.
• The Conservatives tried to make hay of the Liberal letters to tribunal members around their questionable reappointments, conflating it with actual interference.
• The first NDP bill of the parliament will be anti-scab legislation.
• If the Liberals decide to exclude senators from their national security oversight committee, they’ll be walking back from a long-held position (and boneheaded).
• The decision to carve out land from the Experimental Farm for a new Ottawa hospital broke cabinet rules. Look surprised, everyone!
• The other Del Mastro trial saw a conversation about errors in obtaining warrants for the evidence of the alleged donation scheme.
• Stephen Gordon wonders about the current measure of productivity in our economy.
• Susan Delacourt looks at the use of “taxpayers” as a proxy for citizens in public discourse.
• Over at Loonie Politics, I try to reframe the heckling discussion by taking on some of the underlying causes that the current rules engender.

Odds and ends:

Given the 100^th anniversary of the Centre Block fire, John Geddes looks at the architecture of the current Centre Block that replaced it.

The Liberals beat the Conservatives for fundraising for the first time in as long as anyone can remember.

The Auditor General’s office hit back at my tweeting, and BuzzFeed picked it up. I think I’ve made it.