Roundup: Are the rising Senate costs that alarming?

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Because this is sometimes a media criticism blog, I have to say that the CBC story on the rise in bureaucratic expenses in the Senate is…textbook alarmism. Look at the framing. The front third of the story are quotes from senators lighting their hair on fire at the seventy percent rise in costs!, divorced from any actual facts or context. And by the time you get more than halfway down, you have a spokesperson for Senate administration explaining some of those costs, and not necessarily even noting that seven years ago, the Senate was operating at a greatly reduced capacity because Stephen Harper had avoided making any appointments in a fit of pique in the wake of the ClusterDuff scandal, and senators were keeping their heads down lest more hellfire rain down on them. But none of this is mentioned by way of comparison, and only some mention is paid to the fact that because the Senate is now broadcasting its proceedings, it takes a lot more staff to do that work, which is partly why the costs have gone up.

The other thing that nobody is really discussing among all of the alarmist rhetoric and the wailing and gnashing of teeth—obligatory in any story that mentions costs, because Canadian journalism and the CBC in particular absolutely love cheap outrage—is the fact that turning the Senate into a more “independent” chamber is going to make things more costly, because senators can no longer rely on party infrastructure to do some of that work for them on the cheap. It shouldn’t be that big of a mystery as to why displacing that will make other costs rise, but nobody wants to talk about that—only the supposed good that “independent” senators bring. (And some of them do bring good! But the Liberals in particular lost a whole lot of institutional memory and state capacity because Trudeau rather gutlessly cut his party’s senators loose rather than face what was coming with the Auditor General’s report, and pretended it was for the sake of altruism and principle).

While I have a lot of strong opinions about what is happening in the Senate these days, the so-called rise in costs is not one of them. The story here is largely a lot of nothing, dressed up in a frightening costume for clicks, but that’s the current media modus operandi, unfortunately.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 299:

There have been renewed attacks on Kyiv in the early hours, while there is a watchful eye on the Belarusian Border as Putin heads to visit his ally there. Here’s a look at the significance around Hanukkah for Ukraine’s Jewish community, while in Kherson, there are questions as to how Russian forces were able to overtake the city so easily in the first place.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau attended the funeral of Jim Carr over the weekend.
  • Steven Guilbeault insists that they will come to an agreement at the COP15 biodiversity conference, as they head into overtime.
  • The Canadian Press belatedly talks to some real economists about what drove inflation (and then both-sidesed it with political talking points).
  • Pierre Poilievre is trying to replicate Jason Kenney’s “curry-in-a-hurry” model of outreach to socially-conservative ethnocultural communities.
  • Danielle Smith appointed a parliamentary secretary for civil rights, whose job will focus a lot on the unvaccinated, because of course she did.
  • The village of Coutts, Alberta, remains deeply divided after the blockade at its nearby border crossing this February.
  • More condemnation for the Ontario government’s plans to reform how they appoint the chief justice of the Ontario Court of Justice.
  • Chantal Hébert sees signs that Trudeau may actually want to run in the next election (than just saying he will) given how Poilievre seems to be energising him.
  • Althia Raj muses about ministerial accountability and ethics lapses, and why nobody seems to resign any more.

Odds and ends:

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