Roundup: Application versus consultation

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The head of the new Senate Appointment Advisory Board appeared at the Procedure and House Affairs committee yesterday, and has raised a few issues about this new process that are a bit troubling, which has to do with applications – rather, that there seems to be an emphasis on application rather than nominations arising out of consultations. In particular, the ability for people to apply for a seat on their own seems to be at odds with some of the design of the advisory process. Emmett Macfarlane notes that this wasn’t how he envisioned the process when he was asked to help design it, and that it not only overly bureaucratizes the process, but it sets it up for a particularly unsavoury sort to want to apply, which I concur with. Why is this important? Because we’ve only spent the past number of months watching the trial of a certain Mike Duffy, who was well known for wanting desperately to become a senator for decades, and how he viewed such an appointment as a “taskless thanks” which would also provide him with all manner of perquisites – and witness how he managed to monetize all of his relationships as a result of his appointment, as we’ve witnessed in testimony. We also lived though the bizarre spectacle that was Bert Brown, “elected” senator whose self-appointed crusade for Senate reform comprised largely of unsolicited meetings with provinces to convince them of his plan (on the Senate’s dime), and taking to the op-ed pages to basically call his detractors Nazis (I’m not sure how else you take it when he reminds you of his family’s military service in WWII as a rebuttal). Some of the best senators we’ve seen are those who never expected an appointment, and who never would have sought office on their own – people like Roméo Dallaire. It’s also why I’m not sold on the NDP fear that this process will just be elites nominating elites – a broad enough consultation will bring people of accomplishment and expertise in a wide variety of fields than just academia. But at the same time, the Senate should be a place that rewards experience and expertise rather than being a repository for randoms, given their role to scrutinise legislation and act as the country’s premier think tank. I have a hard time seeing how hot dog vendors can fulfil those roles, no matter how many people they interact with in a day.

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/695336557893431300

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/695341816439136261

Good reads:

  • The new plan on our Iraq/Syria mission will be announced within days.
  • It looks like the controversial reappointments to the IRB have been reviewed and the minister is willing to let them stay on.
  • Internal briefing materials show that the promised “open by default” will require a culture change in government.
  • The PBO is trying again to get CRA data to calculate the tax gap, and the new minister says she’ll see what she can do.
  • Dominic LeBlanc calls the supposed $900 million in savings from sick leave changes “voodoo math,” that wouldn’t have generated savings after all.
  • Senator Don Meredith won’t face criminal charges for his sexual relationship with that teenaged girl, but the Senate Ethics investigation has resumed.
  • The Commons Finance committee is going to hold pre-budget consultations and hear from 89 witnesses in four days, pretty much making it a useless exercise.
  • The Del Mastro trial will adjourn until April while the judge considers the constitutional question of whether evidence was gathered illegally.
  • Different takes on Trudeau’s visit to Alberta from Don Braid, Jen Gerson, and Jason Markusoff.

Odds and ends:

It looks like DND will be overhauling the troubled Joint Personnel Support Unit.

Nathan Cullen wants a “proportional” committee to study electoral reform…except the committee he proposes isn’t actually proportional. Oops.