Oh, look – it’s the Senate bat-signal, shining one last time for me this year. Here we go: Senators Greene and Massicotte, who have been trying to organise some internal reforms to the Chamber, are warning that if modernisations don’t happen within the caucuses that they may see more defections from frustrated Senators, and swelling the ranks of Independents – particularly relevant with more senators on the way chosen by this new process (though nothing says that all of these new senators will sit as Independents, or that they won’t opt to sit in one of the two existing caucuses). Many of the reforms that the two are proposing are pretty modest – electing chairs and vice-chairs of standing committees, replacing Question Period with “Issues Period,” electing caucus officers, televising Senate proceedings; larger communications budgets to promote the Senate and its work (particularly committee reports); and electing the Speaker. Some of these are already in the works, like televising/webcasting procedures, which will happen in a year or two, once they get the technology sorted. Similarly, work to reform Senate Communications has been ongoing, and will continue, and I’m sure no one will argue that more money would help. Some of them – electing caucus officers – already happens in the Senate Liberal caucus, and sounds like is starting to happen in the Conservative ranks. The issue of committee membership is a topic that is currently being debated, and no doubt work will be undertaken on this in the Senate Rules committee, where it will start getting hammered out because the growing number of Independents does make this a priority issue for them. Some of the ideas, however, are more problematic, such as electing the Senate Speaker. Why? Because the Senate Speaker is actually the titular Head of Parliament; it makes sense for this to be a government appointee as a result, and because of this titular position, it comes with diplomatic and protocol responsibilities. Having the Senate elect their own that could be in opposition to the government of the day would be a serious problem, which few people seem to be grasping. As for “Issues Period,” I find it to be the weakest suggestion, particularly as asking questions of committee chairs a) is already possible, and b) doesn’t happen often because there’s not a lot to ask of them. As I explained in my piece in the National Post last week, Senate Question Period is about holding government to account, and with there being no Conservative Atlantic Canadian MPs in the Commons, it gives those Atlantic senators an opportunity to play that role. Or rather, it would if they had someone to hold account. In the absence of that, the Senate loses out on one of its functions, which will become a problem, and it’s something that “Issues Period” won’t solve.
Tag Archives: Thomas Mulcair
Roundup: The Senate steps up
In their very first piece of legislation passed, the House of Commons ballsed it up. Quite badly, in fact. In rushing through a supply bill, they didn’t include a necessary schedule for where the money that was being authorised would be spent, which is a pretty big deal. And so, when it reached the Senate, this was caught and the bill had to be sent back before the Senate could deal with it and pass it so that it could get Royal Assent and everyone could go home for the holidays. The Senate, however, was not amused. This is not the first time that defective bills have made it to the Senate, be it when they sent an earlier unamended version down the hall, or when their due diligence wasn’t done and they had to make some kind of excuses to get the Senate to pass it anyway with the promise of adding a clause in a future bill to retroactively fix it. And the patience of the Senate is wearing thin. In the words of Speaker Furey:
“While it is not our place to look into the functioning of the House of Commons, I am appalled that we received a defective bill. If it is the wish of the house, I would be prepared to write to my counterpart in the House of Commons to seek his assurance that this will not happen again.”
Liberal Senator Terry Mercer was even less forgiving and deservedly so:
“It galls me, Mr. Speaker, that they talk about an administrative error. That’s passing the error off onto the staff. I’m sorry; the Members of Parliament voted on this; it is their fault and they alone take the blame… To give us this BS about administrative error, passing the buck off to someone in the administration of the House of Commons, doesn’t wash with me, and it shouldn’t wash with anybody, and it shouldn’t wash with Canadians. I want this to be notice to the Minister of Finance and to our colleagues in the other place that this place will not put up with this anymore.”
Senator Fraser suggested that the Commons needs to examine their system and perhaps even apologise to the Senate, while other Senators noted that this is government legislation and not a private member’s bill, and that perhaps the Senate should not always be as patient and perhaps rise without granting Royal Assent in the future. Part of the root of this is that that the Senate, yet again, did its job while the Commons didn’t. In their haste to get this passed so that MPs can leave, MPs spent a grand total of fifteen minutes on the Supply bill, including Committee of the Whole. That’s right – fifteen minutes to examine and authorise the spending of money by the government. The Senate Finance Committee held three days of pre-study on the bill so that they would know what the issues were, and lo and behold, when the bill arrived in defective form, they could spot it immediately. And as noted before, this keeps happening with increasing frequency. And yet, when we send MPs to Ottawa to “be our representatives,” we seem to forget that they have a job to do – to scrutinize bills, and most especially spending, and they’re not doing it. They leave it to others to do, be it the Auditor General, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, or the Senate – all while bitching and moaning about how terrible the Senate is even though the Senate is actually doing their jobs when MPs aren’t. And the next time I hear someone give me the line about how the Senate has no function in a modern democracy, I can give them yet another object lesson about how the Commons is the real dysfunctional chamber in our democracy. I’ll repeat Speaker Furey’s admonition – it’s appalling. Shape up, MPs. You’re embarrassing yourselves.
Roundup: Winds of change in the Senate
Interesting things are afoot in the Senate, with a number of new motions and bills introduced that could change the way it operates in the future, as well as debates on operations. It’s been pretty fascinating so far, and so far we’ve had:
- Senator Housakos’ point of privilege on the lack of a Leader of the Government in the Senate;
- Senator Carignan’s motion to call ministers to answer questions in the Chamber;
- Senator Mercer tabling a bill that would amend the constitution to allow Senators to elect their own Speaker (and yes, this is the easiest amending formula);
- Senator Wallace leading a debate on committee memberships and how they’re determined.
It’s all very interesting, and there has been some spectacular pushback on the facile notion by some senators that only partisan senators can be effective. There will have to be a great number of rule changes that will have to be debated by the Senate, and in particular the Rules, Procedures and Rights of Parliament committee, whenever it is formally struck (which should be very shortly). Some of those changes will have to be the determination of funding for the Senate Liberal caucus as they are not the government caucus, nor are they the opposition caucus (no matter that they currently sit on the government side, more out of convention than anything). Part of the discussions that were had in response to Senator Housakos’ point of privilege are that Question Period did not enter into the Senate until 1979 (ETA: This is disputed. Senate rules dating to 1969 include it, as does a 1916 edition of Bourinot. Thanks for the corrections), and that independent Senators have chaired committees in the past. These are all matters that will remain up for discussion, but the process of internal change in that Chamber is already upon them.
QP: A New Dawn
It was the first Question Period of the 42nd parliament, and the excitement – and indeed nervousness – in the Chamber was palpable. Would it be a gong show? A serious discussion on policy matters? Would there be the same kinds of canned talking points and obfuscation that we’ve come to expect, or would the era of openness and transparency take hold and offer up substantive answers to substantive questions? And it was a bit of both.
(I did have the full, detailed recap written up, and then my WordPress iOS app swallowed it whole with a “saving error,” so apologies for not being able to provide it today).
Roundup: Changing the refugee timeline
The Liberal government has released their official refugee resettlement plans, and surprising probably no one, they had to back away from the pledge of 25,000 by year’s end. The revised goal is 10,000 by year’s end, the 15,000 remaining by the end of February, and while that number will be both government-sponsored and privately sponsored, they pledge to have a least 25,000 government-sponsored refugees by the end of 2016. All security screening will happen on the ground in the refugee camps, while they will be offered mental health services once in Canada. There are spaces for 6,000 that would be prepared in a couple of different military bases, but those are intended only as a back-up, with the intention to have communities take them right away. So in all, more resettled refugees than the previous government would have done, but not quite as ambitious as they had initially hoped for. As for why the government changed their minds, Trudeau told Matt Galloway in an interview that it was because they wanted to “get it right,” at which point, we ask ourselves how we consider the accountability question. Do we blast them for breaking the campaign promise? Do we point out that it was possibly a reckless promise in the first place, as they were trying to one-up the other parties? Do we try to have a more grown-up conversation where we allow them the ability to change their minds with changing circumstances (and before you say it, no, I don’t think that the attacks in Paris changed anything, particularly about the question of security)? The Conservatives have certainly decided to declare victory on this one, but it should probably be noted that while things are going slower than promised, the doors are not closed, which is unlike the calls we’ve seen in several American states and others. Trudeau is sending the message that these refugees are not some outsider menace, as it should be noted that in fact the vast majority of attacks that have happened to date were from those who were born in the country where the attacks happened, and they were radicalized later in life. It does send a message that keeping up with resettlement is happening in spite of the Paris attacks, and that should perhaps be noted too.
Roundup: Liberal revisionism
Of all of the hopeful and optimistic things that our new cabinet ministers have been talking about, one is already raising alarm bells, which is our new heritage minister, Mélanie Joly. Joly says that her ministry is one about symbols, and she is going to go about changing those symbols to ones of “progressiveness,” saying that those promoted by the previous government weren’t those shared by Canadians. That of course is total nonsense, but it all points to the kinds of revisionism that both parties engage in, even though everyone seemed to think that it was only the Conservatives who did it. While some of this is no doubt in reference to the Conservatives’ fascination – almost to the point of fetishism – with military history and those particularly martial symbols, we shouldn’t pretend that we don’t have these traditions in Canada. Previous Liberal governments indeed liked to do so, with a focus on peacekeeping that may not have reflected reality, or at least the modern reality where the global landscape has changed and those kinds of missions may no longer be feasible the way they once were. The other one that I’m particularly worried about is whether this means that Joly will engage in a purge of monarchical symbols that the Conservatives themselves restored after decades of Liberals trying to push them aside. One of the things that I cannot forgive either the Liberals or NDP for doing in the previous decade was the way in which they allowed the Conservative government to politicise the monarchy by pretending that it only mattered to Conservatives. When they would reintroduce a monarchical symbol, they would complain rather than acknowledge that yes, we are a constitutional monarchy and we should all embrace it and its symbols rather than allowing one party to associate itself with it to the exclusion of all others. Unlike some other Liberals, Trudeau doesn’t appear to be a republican in his sentiments, and has stated that he has no intention of trying to distance Canada from the Crown, but when Joly starts talking about revisionism based on an exclusionary conception of who is and isn’t Canadian (and in this vision, Conservatives apparently aren’t), I worry. Revisionism is going to happen, but it should be called out as much as it was called out under the Conservatives because it’s still distasteful, no matter whose agenda it’s carrying out.
Roundup: Assisted dying heating up
The issue of doctor-assisted dying is heating up the closer we get to Trudeau and cabinet being sworn in, seeing as there’s a looming February deadline on the horizon. Trudeau signalled that he plans to ask the Supreme Court for an extension to their decision to strike the existing laws down, but that too poses its own challenges. The federal government had initially asked the Court for eighteen months, and they gave them twelve, at which point the government sat on it for several months before creating what looked to be a stacked advisory committee to study the issue. That committee is also in the crosshairs, as advocacy groups say that it should be abolished because of its stacked nature. The chair of said committee said that its members’ former positions against assisted dying are no longer relevant because the Court has ruled and they now have to come up with a system that will work to protect the vulnerable while enabling those Canadians who wish to die with dignity to do so on their own terms. It certainly couldn’t hurt Trudeau to let them report and see what they have to say, and then choose to accept or disregard it at that time. The very fact that he’s now forming government should also be a signal that he expects this consultative process to be something other that the one the government engaged in around the prostitution question, in that he is not expecting them to give one response in particular but to have a more thoughtful result in the end. I guess we’ll see. Meanwhile, advocates of religious communities came out against assisted dying again, insisting instead on more resources for palliative care, as though they were mutually exclusive, never mind that the Supreme Court has also made a clear ruling. (And one would think that if they allowed people who wanted to die on their own terms rather to do so, it would free up those resources that were otherwise needlessly prolonging their suffering that could be applied to palliative care, but maybe I’m wrong on that one).
https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/659187808322605056
https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/658299297897824256
Roundup: Artificial anti-terror drama
With the Senate back in the news, it’s like my own personal bat-signal, so let’s delve into it, shall we? First up is a piece about some Conservative senators talking about changes to national security legislation (formerly C-51, which we need to stop referring to it as, since it’s passed and with dissolution the number scheme slate is wiped clean). Despite the ominous headline that warns that they could “disrupt” the plan to change the anti-terror act, there is very little indication in the story that they intend to do just that. They say they’ll study the changes, and they’re not opposed to creating a parliamentary oversight body, so where is the actual plans for disruption? Oh dear. It seems that we may have torqued a headline for the same of drama. I mean, they could disrupt any bill, but they don’t. Try again. Meanwhile, Senate leader Claude Carignan is trying to get assurances that Conservative senators will be able to vote on the interim leader, seeing as that’s in the party’s constitution, particularly because they are now all that is left to represent certain regions of the country – like the Atlantic provinces, or Toronto and Montreal. They will also have a particular heft to their representation, with 47 senators to a current 99 MPs. So that’ll be interesting. (Also, are we really down to four non-Harper appointed Conservatives already? Time flies). Senator Runciman talks about party renewal including proposing that they have their own Kingston Conference to lay the groundwork for their return to power, much as the Liberals have done in times past. Historian Christopher Moore thinks the party should return to caucus selection for permanent leader rather than an expensive and lengthy membership-driven process (which I would agree with), but somehow I doubt the party will buy it.
Roundup: Unrest in the ranks
There appears to be some unrest in the Conservative ranks, we’re starting to hear – both in the caucus and the party machinery itself. While it’s not unthinkable for a party that has just lost an election, they seem to be doing some questionable things. Things like trying to bar defeated candidates from one last caucus gathering that’ll allow them to vent and hug it out behind closed doors. Denied of that, they’ll likely start talking to the media, their muzzles loosed. It’s started, even with some that were not defeated (but more on that in a moment). Behind the scenes, there’s some rancorous finger-pointing going on with Jenni Byrne in the centre of it all. And while this takes place, Diane Finley stepped forward to make it known that she is officially interested in becoming interim leader, as Rob Nicholson has so far unofficially. What was curious was the way in which Finley went onto Power & Politics to make her case about needing to transition from a more “authoritarian” PMO to a “collaborative” OLO, and basically shrugging off her participation in said authoritarianism. She touts her management experience, but what I heard from civil servants during Finley’s first go-around as minister of Human Resources was that she walked into the building and told everyone that they were all Liberals and she was going to fix the joint up. Collaborative! (She later went to Immigration and broke the system, creating massive backlogs by refusing to make appointments to the Immigration and Refugee Board until she had re-jigged the selection process. Management skills!) Word also has it that both Jason Kenney and Kellie Leitch have their leadership teams assembled, so that race could easily kick off right away. Whether they wait to hash out what happened over the election that led to their demise, or they discuss what kind of reorganization the party needs before they get into the leadership process, doesn’t seem to be a concern yet at this point. We’ll see if that’s a problem going forward.
Diane Finley makes it official re: interim leadership bid. #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/fO5J2AbOS3
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) October 23, 2015
Roundup: Threats from the Senate
There are a couple of issues arising out of the Senate right now, both of which deserve a bit of exploration. The first is over the selection of the party’s interim leader – the party president has indicated that the Commons caucus would make the selection (per the provisions in Michael Chong’s lamentable Reform Act). Senator David Wells says that no, the party constitution says that an interim leader would be chosen by the Parliamentary caucus, which would include senators. Why is this important? Because right now, the party has no East Coast MPs, nor any from the GTA or Montreal, whereas they have Senators from those regions who can provide some of that input. (In fact, it’s yet another reason for why the Senate is valuable – for years, it used to mean that the only Albertans in the Liberal caucus were from the Senate, until of course Trudeau’s Great Expulsion). And as Wells points out, this is an issue in the party’s own constitution, which makes the party president’s position that much more untenable. The other issue is certain Conservative senators trying to flex their muscles and saying that they’re under no obligation to pass Liberal legislation, much as in 2006, Liberal senators were giving the Conservatives a hard time with some of their bills. This whole thing is problematic for a number of reasons. First of all, this is likely someone talking out of their ass (and I have my suspicions as to who it is). With Harper no longer leader, and no longer PM, any leverage that he had with the Senate has pretty much evaporated. Newer senators no longer have someone to feel beholden to, and there is no longer the emotional blackmail of “You want to support the PM, don’t you?” Those non-existent levers of power that the PMO was trying to exercise (per Nigel Wright’s complaints) no longer have anything to back them up when it comes to threat or reward. And then there’s the matter of 2006 that these oh-so-brave “senior senators” are referencing, particularly the Accountability Act. The problem was that it was a bad bill that had all kinds of problems and loopholes, but they didn’t get fixed on the Commons side? Why? Because the Liberals of that era were so cowed by their election loss that they left the fight up to the Senate rather than take the blowback themselves, while Pat Martin was the Conservatives’ accomplice, giddily rubber-stamping the whole affair in order to punish the Liberals some more. So the Liberals in the Senate did the battling for the needed amendments, most of which they actually got. I’m going to be optimistic and say that the legislation coming from this crop of Liberals is likely to be of higher calibre because they’re not opposed to listening to civil service advice for kneejerk reasons. On top of it all, there has to be enough shreds of self-awareness in the Conservative senate caucus to know that if they start playing games, they’ll damage themselves and the Chamber’s reputation as Trudeau tries to rehabilitate it, and everyone will lose as a result. So you’ll excuse me if I don’t take these threats too seriously.
https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/657348537873735682