Roundup: A bad term-limit promise

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Senator John Wallace announced yesterday that he’s keeping his pledge to Stephen Harper and resigning after eight years in the chamber despite the fact that he won’t have reached the mandatory age of 75. Of the other cohort of Senators that Harper appointed in late 2008, only Pamela Wallin has indicated that she plans to also end her term after 8 years – but not including the time she was suspended, so she’s got a couple of years left to go. Other senators from that cohort have either said that their pledge was conditional on Harper’s reform plans, which went down in flames after the Supreme Court of Canada shot them down spectacularly, or that they still have things left to accomplish, which is fair. But you know there is a whole crowd of people waiting for them to fail to live up to this “promise.”

Here’s the thing – it was a bad promise that Harper never should have extracted because short term limits are antithetical to the design of our senate, and that a mandatory retirement age of 75 is actually part of its structural guarantees. By having security of tenure, senators are able to exercise institutional independence, and by ensuring that they have employment until age 75, there is not the temptation for them to try to curry favour with the government in order to try and win some kind of post-Senate appointment (be it a diplomatic posting, or heading and administrative tribunal or commission). The lack of term limits like Harper was proposing were part of what is supposed to keep senators more independent and less beholden to the party leaders than MPs are. But it’s not like Harper was trying to undermine the Senate’s ability to be independent – oh, wait. He spent his nine years in power doing exactly that. So no, I will not be joining in the chorus demanding these senators resign, and in fact, I think Wallace is making a mistake in doing so.

Meanwhile, the Senate has grave concerns about bill S-3 on gender inequities in registering First Nations identity with the government, which the minister herself has acknowledged has problems but she wants them to pass it anyway because there’s a court deadline which she said they couldn’t extend, but now it looks like they’re going to. Also, this was a government bill introduced in the Senate so you can’t even claim that it goes against the will of the Commons. Once again, the Senate is doing its job, and oh, look – Andrew Coyne is furiously clutching his pearls over it, while National Post reporter’s description of the current state of the Senate is that they’re moving away from rubber-stamping bills which was never their role in the first place. Honestly, my head is about to explode about this. Again.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/808862320478875651

Good reads:

  • The Marijuana Task Force tabled its report, which includes recommending the minimum age be 18. More recommendations are detailed here.
  • The government has announced the promised review process for their assisted dying legislation.
  • A Commons committee unsurprisingly wants Canada Post to restore door-to-door delivery, but also wants it to expand to providing Internet and/or cell service.
  • The NDP tried to get the Commons to fast-track the bill on safe injection sites; the Conservatives were not willing to play ball.
  • The government’s single-web portal project has gone completely off the rails and won’t meet its deadlines. Look surprised, everyone!
  • Also off the rails is a $1.5 billion programme to train fighter pilots.
  • The PBO is fighting with National Defence about getting costing figures for new warships. Try to look surprised!
  • The government is starting to make changes to the Temporary Foreign Workers Programme, but not yet on the pathways to citizenship.
  • MPs have voted to study “violent pornography” as a “public health crisis,” because apparently, we need to import American right-wing anti-pornography tactics.
  • Ontario NDP MPP Jagmeet Singh was making the rounds in Ottawa this week, but is still playing coy about federal leadership ambitions.
  • Maxime Bernier thinks we should have a zero percent inflation target and took shots at the Bank of Canada governor, calling his statements “political.”
  • Erin O’Toole is proposing a three-year tax break for new graduates.
  • Michael Den Tandt thinks that Kevin O’Leary could have the right stuff for leadership, if he can develop an appetite for the debasing things leadership entails.
  • Susan Delacourt points out some of the discrepancies between the Liberals fundraising practices and their eliminating $10 membership fees for the party.
  • My Loonie Politics column looks at the Auditor General’s Senate audit and the problems that the legal analysis of it exposed.

Odds and ends:

Conservative MP Ed Fast suffered a stroke at home on Saturday.

The country’s Chief Public Health Officer is retiring early.

For iPolitics, I covered journalist Tom Clark’s farewell party.

2 thoughts on “Roundup: A bad term-limit promise”

  1. Great discussion of term limits! Would you support abolishing the age limit as well? I’ve never been convinced it’s necessary, as long as attendance requirements are enforced rigorously.

    I really hope Bill S-3 teaches the government the necessary lessons about the salutary consequences of a properly functioning Senate. Sadly, it’s more likely to motivate them to stop introducing bills via the Senate, so that Harder can more easily trot out his pieties about respecting the Commons. What a menace that man is.

    • I’m fine with the age limit. 75 is the limit for judges as well, so it’s not entirely arbitrary.

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