Roundup: Framing Senate efficacy

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Occasionally a headline will give me pause, and sometimes the framing of the story beneath it will make me shake my head. This is one of those times. “Liberals tailor upcoming budget to pass through empowered Senate,” the headline reads. And the story is framed in such a way that this is the unintended consequence of Trudeau changing the appointment process for Senators so that there are now all of these independent senators that the government has to contend with who won’t simply roll-over when asked.

The case-in-point isn’t so much the assisted dying legislation as it was C-29, the government’s fall budget implementation bill, wherein a few senators started to dig in their heels about the section in the bill related to changes to the Bank Act that would have given the federal government the power to change consumer protections in the banking sector, and Quebec objected. The rub here is that part of Quebec’s objection was that the Supreme Court of Canada had already ruled that this was an area of provincial jurisdiction and the federal government was clearly trying to bigfoot this. Eventually the finance minister backed down and took the section out of the bill, and the Senate passed it as amended. In other words, they did their jobs by ensuring that a problem in the legislation got fixed.

But that’s not how this is being framed. No, it’s all about how senators are flexing their muscles and not being rubber stamps, and now government “policy-makers” have to be more attuned to senators’ particular agendas so that they can be accommodated. And I’m shaking my head at this because it’s deliberately misconstruing what happened with C-29, and it’s making the suggestion that things were better before when governments could ram flawed bills through the Senate because they could ostensibly whip their caucus to pass it (although I will caution that such whips were voluntary – no senator has ever really been bound by a whip the way MPs are). What is galling about the pundits who are buying this line and framing their pieces to fit that line is that it’s tacitly agreeing that the Senate should not be doing its job, and that it’s fine for governments to ram through flawed bills for some reason. This is why we have a Senate – to provide the check on bills that the Commons won’t because of the party whips. Because these senators put up a fight and insisted that the government take those sections out and at least put them in a separate bill, they wound up saving the government the cost of what would have been another years-long fight in the courts going all the way back up to the Supreme Court to rehash this very same fight over jurisdiction and probably losing. And I have to ask – why is everyone so offended by the notion that the Senate is doing what it’s supposed to be doing? I have yet to hear a good answer, and no, hand-waving and shouting “democracy!” is not an answer.

Good reads:

  • The Ethics Commissioner has agreed the complaints about Trudeau’s vacation aren’t vexatious and will look into them; Trudeau isn’t worried about it.
  • The Vice-Chief of Defence Staff was temporarily removed from duty with no explanation, and the allegation is leaked materials.
  • The three territories have made healthcare funding deals with the federal government.
  • The Senate Speaker plus a few other senators went on a parliamentary exchange to Saudi Arabia, so now the opposition parties must make hay.
  • The military’s Joint Personnel Support Unit is short dozens of staff.
  • BC Indigenous leaders are accusing the government of stalling on fulfilling their promise to better fund child and welfare services.
  • Canadian Business corrects the Oxfam Canada report on the wealthiest Canadians.
  • Kevin Milligan talks tax rates and how personal and corporate taxes may or may not have to respond to the coming Trumpocalypse.
  • Here’s an updated look at endorsements and fundraising in the Conservative leadership race.
  • John Geddes talks to some of the people involved in Kevin O’Leary’s putative leadership bid.
  • A leaked poll from Maxime Bernier’s camp suggests a three-way race between him, Raitt and Leitch.
  • Andrew Coyne offers his assessment of why he thinks O’Leary won’t win.
  • Colby Cosh gives his own sober evaluation about bilingualism in high office.
  • Kady O’Malley wonders why Trudeau is so reluctant to apologise for his vacation (though one could argue he may not have anything to actually apologise for).
  • Stephen Gordon explains why we don’t have a “Harvard of Canada,” and why that’s actually a good thing.

Odds and ends:

Here’s a look at the secret orders made in the 1950s regarding massive RCMP surveillance operations being authorized.

It turns out that some shady land speculation is why the Rideau Canal wound up on the route it is, and how that altered Ottawa’s development.