Roundup: Coming up with a new organizational model

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There’s the Senate bat-signal, and there are a couple of articles out there about how the Senate organizes itself that need to be discussed. Global has an exclusive piece about how the Senate agreed to change its organisational funding model in light of their new post-government caucus reality, but *gasp!* it’s all closed-door negotiations about your taxpayer dollars! Oh, I’m sorry, did I yawn there? Senate caucus funding used to be allocated along government and opposition lines, but with there being no governing party in the Senate any longer, Senate Liberals were at risk of losing their operational funding, and yes, this is an issue because it costs money to run things and the Senate is an integral part of our democratic system. The compromise that they came up with, allocating funds on a proportional basis of seats, is actually pretty novel. Yes, it’s more money than they got before, but remember that the Senate Liberals can no longer draw from the caucus resources of their Commons counterparts either, particularly for things like research dollars, so not giving them some kind of additional resources would be punishing them again for Trudeau’s unilateral decision to kick them out of caucus. Let’s not forget that democracy costs money, and one of the most egregious forms of cheap outrage journalism is pretending that a parliamentary body can be run for pennies when it absolutely cannot, particularly if we want them to do the heavy lifting of parliament, as they are increasingly doing. Meanwhile, there is some consternation that the government won’t be appointing a whip when they appoint their “government representative” in lieu of a Leader of the Government in the Senate, but mostly because there has been a defined role in terms of the government whip for doing some of those organisational tasks like allocating offices and parking spaces, not to mention organising committee assignments when there are only so many spaces to go around and lots of senators want on some committees and fewer on others. After all, the whip’s job is more than just telling people how to vote – that role has been far less prevalent in the Senate, and well before Trudeau’s edict, Liberal Senators were not being given instruction by their Commons counterparts and exercised a great deal of independence. (As for the Conservatives, we saw in the Duffy trial that Nigel Wright was trying to encourage Harper to exercise levers of power that didn’t actually exist within the Senate, to the institution’s detriment, and while many Conservative senators don’t see anything wrong with the way they’ve been doing things, well, they haven’t known any differently and that’s part of the problem). Of course, with no government caucus, there is less of a need for that role, but what I suspect is going to end up happening is that the Senate’s internal bureaucracy is going to wind up taking on more responsibilities to deal with this lack of the traditional structures and growing number of independent senators. Again, there are organisational duties that need to be performed, and it would behove the institution to figure out who’s going to do them.

Good reads:

  • The report on doctor assisted dying was released yesterday, with the Conservative MPs dissenting. More from co-chair Senator Ogilvie.
  • The government is undoing Conservative changes to the Citizenship Act, but all anyone can talk about is the Toronto 18 ringleader getting his citizenship back.
  • The government also announced plans to change the Governor-in-Council appointment process, but details are still vague.
  • Public service unions want a consultation role on policy. What could possibly go wrong with that idea? (Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!)
  • Department of Justice lawyers are getting erroneously given bonuses clawed back.
  • Here’s an interesting read about Trudeau’s trying to attract foreign tech firms to Canada risks turning us into a new branch plant economy.
  • People are reading an awful lot into the government not being unilateral about the F-35 fighter jet.
  • Adam Radwanski looks at some of the challenges of the new cabinet in getting up to speed.

Odds and ends:

Anti-monarchists seek attention, but aren’t getting much of it.

It’s looking increasingly like the Portrait Gallery might be restarted in the old US Embassy across from Parliament Hill.

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