Another day, another badly executed wrap-up article on the Senate, this time courtesy of the CBC, which again, has a badly misleading lede in which it claims that “Legislative changes that would have made it harder for a future prime minister to reverse Senate reforms have fallen through.” This is wrong – any changes to the Parliament of Canada Act that the government was contemplating would have had zero effect on the selection process for future senators. Why? Because that’s not governed by that Act, or indeed any piece of legislation – it’s part of the constitution, and clearly spelled out as a prerogative of the Governor-in-Council, meaning the prime minister and Cabinet will advise the Governor General as to who gets appointed. There is nothing that Trudeau could do to bind that advice legislatively – recall the Senate reform reference to the Supreme Court of Canada – that would require a constitutional amendment requiring seven provinces with fifty percent of the population to do.

What would changes to the Parliament of Canada Act regarding the Senate do? The actual proposals were to ensure that leaders of any parliamentary group in the Senate would get commensurate salary increases and resources to put them on par with the what is nominally the government and official opposition in the Senate, and the ISG has been pushing for this pretty hard, but they also were demanding to be part of consideration for vote bells, though I’m not sure why it would matter (particularly given that they have demonstrated time and again that they’re not reliable negotiating partners). But I also suspect that part of the reason why these changes didn’t get proposed was because there is some legal opinion that it would require some kind of buy-in from provinces to make this kind of change, so there was likely little time for the government to add this ball to all of the other ones they were juggling that late in the parliamentary calendar (despite the cries of the ISG). Of course, this hasn’t stopped the media from falsely framing these changes as affecting the selection process, as this has been cited by more than one reporter from more than one outlet, and it’s false.

The rest of the story is again more of the same voices opining on how great the “new” Senate is working, but we fortunately got a bit of pushback from Liberal Senator Lillian Dyck, who did point out that the lack of organisation among the Independents has held up bills and slowed down the process – and she’s right. But nobody wants to talk about that as they’re busy patting themselves on the back for “not being whipped.” There’s more to the Senate than that, and they need to get off this self-congratulation because things aren’t working as well as they like to claim.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau will meet with Ukraine’s new president in Toronto next week.
• China says they will halt all meat imports from Canada, saying veterinary certificates were falsified and that a banned growth hormone was found in shipments.
• Pablo Rodriguez announced the government’s new anti-racism secretariat, and funding for things like data collection and public education.
• Catherine McKenna announced that the remainder of carbon price funds will go to do energy retrofits of schools – but it requires the cooperation of provinces.
• The government announced that VIA Rail will get $71 million (some of it via the Infrastructure Bank) to work on the next steps of the high-frequency rail corridor.
• Some Indigenous chiefs say that they weren’t meaningfully consulted on the Trans Mountain expansion, particularly Coldwater First Nation.
• DND headquarters will hold a re-dedication ceremony for the Afghan war memorial, this time to include the families of the fallen soldiers.
• CRA says that one Ontario man fraudulently claimed child benefits for 41 fictitious children, which raises questions about the complexity of the Tax Code.
• CBSA continues to use a licence plate reader whose company was hacked and faced a major privacy breach.
• Senator Pate says that the Senate’s original amendments to the solitary confinement bill would have made it constitutional, but the government rejected them.
• Outgoing Liberal MP Geng Tan is being accused by his former staffer of impregnating her and not paying child support. (More details here).
• Kim Campbell is no fan of the Conservative climate “plan.”
• Susan Delacourt laments the demand-side problem of fake news, and why it’s up to people to stop looking for stories that confirm their biases. (Good luck with that).
• My column delves into why Jason Kenney’s plan to revive Senate “elections” is not only unconstitutional, but is about inventing grievances to keep his voters angry.

Odds and ends:

Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques has returned safely to Earth.

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