In the wake of Karina Gould’s appearance at Senate QP earlier this week, the ISG is reaching out to the media to push the narrative that they desperately need changes to the Parliament of Canada Act in order to “finish the job” of making the Senate “independent,” which has me giving a bit of a resigned sigh because it feels to me a bit like someone climbing onto a steamroller when they’ve barely taking the training wheels off of a bicycle. While there are arguments to be made for changes to the Act, it ignores the fact that it’s actually fairly difficult to do (previous attempts to change the Act have been curtailed because of legal opinions that have stated that it may require the consultation of the provinces), and the fact that it’s probably premature to start making these changes.

While on the one hand, I understand that the ISG is looking to cement changes to the Senate in advance of the election in the event that the Liberals don’t win and a hypothetical Andrew Scheer-led Conservative government starts making partisan appointments again, and they want to protect the gains they’ve made, but on the other hand, they really still haven’t even learned how the Senate operates currently, so demanding changes in advance of that seems a bit precious. The fact that they haven’t managed to figure out some pretty basic procedure (while complaining that it’s being used against them) and then demanding the rulebook be thrown out and rewritten to suit them is problematic, and making what amount to permanent changes to the institution on the basis of what is currently a grand experiment seems completely foolhardy – particularly when they have already negotiated workarounds to most of the issues that are currently irritating them, such as funds for the ISG, while I’m really not sure why the length of vote bells is being treated as a dire circumstance demanding action.

The other thing that bothers me with the interview that Senator Woo gave is that he’s demanding that Trudeau pick up the reins with this modernisation while he’s thus-far been content to let Senators figure it out. Granted, there is an element of “he made this mess and now he’s letting everyone else clean it up” to the whole thing, but I’m not sure I want to trust Trudeau to finish the job of “modernising” the Senate because of the fact that he’s caused significant damage that a future generation is going to have to undo, and along the way, he’s managed to centralise more power within the caucus room as part of his ham-fisted “fix” for a Senate problem that didn’t actually exist. Trying to get him to finish the job may simply be inviting bigger problems that will take even longer to undo.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau said that Canadians expect there to be consequences to Saudi Arabia for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, which might mean freezing export permits.
• The government announced there will be a new northern division of the Coast Guard that will operate in the Arctic with the assistance of the Inuit.
• The government is hosting 12 other countries’ representatives to talk WTO reform today.
• The programme to expunge the records of LGBT Canadians convicted for gay sex has had a mere nine requests to date.
• Alberta’s environment minister was in Ottawa yesterday to convince senators to make certain amendments to Bill C-69 on environmental assessments.
• It looks like Ontario’s withdrawal from cap-and-trade means we’re further away from our climate targets because we can’t count on Quebec and California credits.
• The government’s plan for an Indigenous self-government framework looks stalled because of confusion and suspicion.
• Gun control groups want the government to live up to promises to ban handguns and assault rifles.
• Public service unions think they should get an 11 percent raise over the next three years because of Phoenix. Good luck with that one.
• Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj says he won’t run again next year.
• After days of waffling back and forth, Andrew Scheer says that no, they wouldn’t re-criminalise cannabis but try to deal with what’s not working.
• NDP MP Sheila Malcolmson has decided to run for a provincial seat in BC, making her the eighth MP in the party to jump ship.
• Jagmeet Singh has announced that he’ll be “borrowing” Andrea Horwath’s chief of staff, for what it’s worth.
• Susan Delacourt notices that the Liberal government has stopped talking about income inequality (at least in such explicit terms).
• Chantal Hébert notes the momentum continually deflating from the NDP under Jagmeet Singh as they lose another MP.
• Martin Patriquin writes about how François Legault made the calculation that supporting cap-and-trade was the politic thing to do in Quebec.
• Andrew Coyne points to the flaws in the new federal carbon backstop, but also notes that it’s the best thing that’s on offer right now.
• Colby Cosh explains the carbon backstop with the example of Hot Tub Guy, based on Alberta having already been through this process.

Odds and ends:

The government says that the five-year high in EI fraud is because they can better detect it and deal with it.

Today in the foyer of the House of Commons, Jagmeet Singh's weekly post caucus press conference was interrupted by the Speaker's Parade. #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/48Qlmm63Wt

— Mackenzie Gray (@Gray_Mackenzie) October 24, 2018

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