At long last – and indeed, at virtually the last possible minute – prime minister Justin Trudeau finally – finally! – named a new Leader of the Government in the Senate yesterday, independent Quebec senator Marc Gold. This wasn’t actually a surprise to those of us who’ve had our ears to the ground, but amidst the speculation of who Trudeau would name, many of them allegedly said no when they were asked (or at least said they did). The next question is who Gold can convince to come aboard as his deputy and whip (or “liaison” as they like to call themselves), because he won’t be able to replicate Senator Peter Harder’s too-clever-by-half trick of getting a former Conservative as his deputy and a former Liberal as his whip, so that he could insist that look, he was so non-partisan and independent in the middle of the two. Gold does sound like he plans to continue Harder’s half-pregnant fiction that he can be both independent and government “representative,” and has repeated the eye-rolling line that he “represents the government in the Senate and the Senate to the government.” Because no, that’s not actually how this works.

In an interview with CTV’s Power Play, Gold largely stuck to platitudes when asked how he will get big pieces of legislation through the Senate, insisting that the Senate will “rise to the occasion” and have “lively debate,” but would not say anything about things like, oh, negotiation. I will note that it was heartening to see that he did understand that the role of the Senate was to have a longer-range view and the less-partisan perspective, and kept insisting that it was a complementary body to the House of Commons, but his talk about the danger of it being an “echo chamber” of the Commons was a bit more off the mark. But countering this was the fact that he also seems to accept the false notion that these so-called reforms that Trudeau has been pushing somehow “returns” it to its raison d’être, which is not true in the slightest. It was never supposed to be non-partisan, and the more that people keep saying it is, misreading both the original debates on Confederation and the Supreme Court of Canada reference decision, the more it shows that we have an uphill struggle to keep these would-be reformers from doing lasting damage to the institution out of their well-meaning ignorance.

Good reads:

• Senior officials are prodding Justin Trudeau to revive the vice-regal appointments commission, and thank the gods for this development because it matters a lot.
• Chrystia Freeland has a lengthy and wide-ranging interview with the Financial Times (where she used to be the boss).
• Freeland and Mary Ng are at Davos leading an initiative to establish an alternate dispute resolution mechanism for the WTO in the face of American obstruction.
• François-Philippe Champagne says that he is “cautiously optimistic” about Canada winning that UN Security Council seat.
• A former member of Canada’s special forces has been released from the military after stealing supplies (including weapon parts) and selling them online.
• Andrew Scheer emerged from his caucus retreat to talk tough, insisting that their leadership race won’t hold them back from criticizing the Liberals.
• Marilyn Gladu is grousing that she’s getting less media attention than certain male would-be leadership candidates who haven’t even formally declared.
• Michelle Rempel is not yet ruling out a leadership bid, particularly as there is no longer a western “voice” in the race (and no, Rick Peterson doesn’t count).
• Here’s a look at how climate change could make itself felt during the Conservative leadership, particularly given Australia being on fire.
• Susan Delacourt enumerates the reasons why would-be candidates are stepping away from the Conservative leadership race.
• Matt Gurney pours cold water on the theory that Stephen Harper is simply angling for a comeback.
• Aaron Wherry wonders about what Stephen Harper’s propensity for kneecapping any potential heirs has done for that party over the long term.
• Andrew Potter castigates those who would sneer at Pierre Poilievre for dropping out of the race to spend more time with his family.
• Kevin Carmichael hears what the business community is saying about the Bank of Canada’s latest numbers, and points to places where the government can act.
• My weekend column takes issue with Samara Canada’s retrospective on the 42^nd Parliament, where they oddly count things to draw poor lessons from it.

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