Independent Senator Dan Christmas has opted to open a “constituency” office in his local Mi’kmaw community in Nova Scotia in a bid to be more accessible. Which is all well and good, but the CBC piece that reported on this is atrocious. Embarrassingly so.

The article refers to Christmas as a “member of the Canadian government” which he explicitly is not. Being a member of government means being part of Cabinet, which Christmas certainly is not. In fact, as a senator, his job is to hold government to account. That’s not talked about in here at all. I’m also not sure what he hopes to use the office for, because senators traditionally don’t do the kinds of constituency work that MPs do, such as acting in an ombudsman-like capacity for constituents having trouble dealing with the civil service (particularly with immigration files, which is a huge problem). And it’s not like he’s the first senator to do so – I recall Senator Mike Duffy making a big deal about doing the same thing in PEI (which I can’t recall if he ever got around to actually doing, or if it was simply a stated intention that some of the usual pundits went around congratulating him for), and Senator Bob Runciman had a constituency office as well. Regardless, the article doesn’t really give much of a sense of his plans for the office – just that he wants to be visible in his community and that he wants to be a kind of “ambassador” to Ottawa from the Mi’kmaw, which again, not really an apt analogy because he doesn’t represent that government in any capacity. I am forced to wonder if this is a result of a lack of understanding of his role because, as an Independent senator, he lacks much in the way of proper mentoring from established senators, but again, I remain mystified, and we’ll see how long this lasts before he realises he could better spend his office budget doing things that are of more utility.

Good reads:

• The Commons immigration committee will meet today, and is looking to get Ahmed Hussen to testify about the state of irregular border crossings.
• Former PBO Kevin Page is set to tell premiers that national pharmacare will mean increasing taxes, and suggests returning the GST to seven percent.
• Of the 28 new judicial positions created in the 2017 budget, only half have been filled to date (as this government still can’t manage appointments).
• While the Conservatives suggested that carbon taxes might affect Greyhound’s decision to shut down service in Western Canada, the company said nope.
• Apparently Wood Buffalo National Park is deteriorating, both from nearby industry and dams along the waterways leading to it.
• The Canadian Forces are acquiring new Israeli-built radar systems, but they won’t integrate with other NATO allies’ systems. Oops.

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